


Office Politics

by camphor



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Hating Game - Sally Thorne
Genre: (Obviously), Alternate Title: Ben Solo Cockblocks Himself, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dysfunctional Solo family fun, Eventual Smut, F/M, Jealous Ben, Kissing and workplace shenanigans abound, Office Romance, Pining, Rey and Ben are editors in Seattle, Slow Burn, Tagging as I go, Workplace Rivalry, also loopy soft boy Ben, book nerd reylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:22:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27134515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camphor/pseuds/camphor
Summary: Rey Hutton is, by all accounts, perfectly likable.So, when Ben Solo decides that he hates her — immediately and without reservation, she might add, if you’re so inclined to ask for her opinion — Rey, in turn, decides that he is simply defective.A modern office romance based on Sally Thorne’s “The Hating Game.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 159
Kudos: 311
Collections: Ijustfellintothissendhelp





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I’m finally writing the Reylo office rom-com of my dreams. 
> 
> It isn’t required that you read “The Hating Game” to understand this, though the book is wickedly good and well worth your time. This story will be based off of the key premise of the novel with some divergences.
> 
> And, of course, smut. 
> 
> Can’t wait to have you on this ride!

Rey Hutton is, by all accounts, perfectly likable.

She remembers all of her colleagues’ birthdays via a color-coded calendar she keeps in her desk drawer, tucked between her mini stapler and day-of-the-week file dividers. She feigns interest in their children’s extracurriculars, plans holiday parties, makes fresh coffee when the pot is out. When First Order Publishing House merged with Rebel Press, she left homemade cookies (gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, of course), on each of her new coworkers’ desks, along with an office map and a hand-printed welcome note. The carpal tunnel was, after all, a small collateral price to pay for the satisfaction of a job well done. 

So, when Ben Solo decides that he hates her — _immediately and without reservation_ , she might add, if you’re so inclined to ask for her opinion — Rey, in turn, decides that he is simply defective. 

She remembers the day like a bad dream. She’d arrived early to the new office, if only because she didn’t trust her behemoth ‘80’s Beamer (dubbed “The Falcon” by her best friend Finn, due to the veritable squawking sound it emits when pushing sixty or making hairpin turns), to make it across town in time. She couldn’t risk being late for the first day of the merger, particularly given that Rey was vying for a promotion before the end of the next quarter. 

To her surprise, her corner office was already occupied. The occupant in question faced the south wall, silhouetted handsomely in soupy pre-dawn light. His cream dress shirt pinched over his taut shoulders and his broad palms were planted flat on his hips. He looked like a conqueror surveying the bloody aftermath of a battlefield rather than the parking lot of a publishing house.

She noticed, idly, that he didn’t have any pictures or knick knacks. The extent of his possessions were, as far as she could tell, two blue ball point pens and a box of Altoids. She suddenly felt silly about the box of tchotchkes she’d brought over from Rebel.

Assuming that he must have been lost, Rey squared her shoulders and stepped into the room, putting on her best megawatt smile, dimples and all. “Hello!” 

The man turned, and, in a series of slow blinks, he sized her up all the way from the top of her head to her ruby red rain boots. He was devastatingly handsome in a somewhat illogical sort of way, all harsh lines and angles, save for a pair of surprisingly lush lips. His dark eyes narrowed onto her like two cold iron sights. 

“Who are you?” 

Rey’s smile faltered. Of all of the responses she’d been expecting, this one hadn’t made the list. “I- Sorry?” 

His voice was a low, vaguely irritated rumble. “I thought I had my own office.” 

Rey set her cardboard box down on the edge of the desk. _Her desk_ , as she’d been assured repeatedly by her boss. When Rey had caught wind of the merger, she’d bribed Poe with freshly-baked pastries for _months_ in her plot to secure the coveted corner office. It was situated for optimal sunlight and airflow, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell she was about to give it up to a scowling knob in need of a haircut. 

“This is my office,” Rey said, a little breathless.

“No,” he replied. “This is _my_ office. Unless, of course, your name is _also_ Ben Solo.” She followed the path of his index finger to the gold nameplate on the door.

“This must be a mistake,” Rey sputtered. “My boss, Poe-”

“Gossiping about me, are we, Rey?”

Poe Dameron rounded the corner, appearing, as he always did, vaguely disheveled. He was wearing a crooked tie printed with jet planes and carried a marked-up manuscript in the crook of his arm. Despite his organizational shortcomings, he was a wonderful boss and perhaps the sharpest person Rey had ever met.

“Poe,” Rey gasped, desperately relieved to see a friendly face. “I think there must have been some sort of mix-up-”

“Oh! I completely forgot.” Poe stepped into the office, which was now quickly growing cramped between three occupants, one of which being a looming, overgrown _manchild_. “Rey, this is Ben Solo. You two will be sharing this office.”

Inexplicably, her gaze drifted to meet Ben’s at the same time that he looked up from the spot on the floor he’d previously been glaring a hole into. He spent a moment examining her intently, and then, as though displeased with what he saw, turned back to Poe, frowning. “What?” 

“I think I’m confused, Poe,” Rey said, her voice tight with mounting helplessness. “I thought we had discussed that I’d be taking the corner office.”

“I’m sorry, Rey.” Genuine regret flickered across Poe’s features as he pulled a heavy hand over his stubbled jaw. “There was an error with the floor planning, and we needed to reserve the other corner office for…” He coughed. “ _Phasma_.” 

Rey respected Poe’s dogged attempt to neutralize his tone when referring to their new co-CEO, former CEO of First Order Publishing House, and Ben’s boss. Poe disliked her openly and implicitly and had privately told Rey that he believed she stood for, in no less dramatic terms, “The death of literature as art and the propagation of literature as profit.”

The sentiment explained the line in the sand between the employees of Rebel Press and First Order Publishing House. Rebel Press employees wore jeans to the office, left work early on Fridays, set cheeky out of office emails. First Order Publishing House employees kept Excel spreadsheets, never left work early except on holiday weekends, and did math for _fun_. 

Rey methodically schooled her expression into one of cool professionalism. Shoulders back, chin tipped up, smile glued back into place, so help her God. “It’s fine, Poe. I understand.” 

Poe sighed, clapping Rey on the shoulder. “That’s a relief, because it looks like your desk is here.” 

Rey peered over Poe’s shoulder. Two beefy movers hovered in the threshold of the office with Rey’s desk balanced precariously over their shoulders. She glanced around, wondering where on earth it was supposed to fit. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Poe added placatingly, “We’re having a nameplate installed for you, too.” 

When she turned to glance back at Ben, he had the audacity to _smirk_. 

* * *

It’s been six months since the fateful merger, and Rey’s disdain for Ben Solo only grows by the day. 

She hates everything about him, most notably his hatred of _her,_ though she’d never admit that to him. To do so would be to admit that his opinion matters to her. 

“I just don’t get it. How could anyone hate you, Peanut?” Finn pops a handful of pretzels into his mouth. “You’re so damn cute.” 

They’re sprawled out in the kitchen, flanked on all sides by piles of manuscripts, having opted to take a working lunch together. Which, by their definition, mostly refers to light work and heavy gossip. 

“Nobody liked him at First Order, either,” Rose says, reaching around Rey to grab a pretzel from Finn’s plate. 

Perhaps the only good thing First Order Publishing House had brought Rey was Rose Tico. They had met in the bathroom on the first day of the merger and Rose had seamlessly infiltrated Rey and Finn’s duo as though they’d been friends all along. 

Rey perks up at that. “Really?” 

Rose nods, chewing. “He always acted like he was above it all. Came in at nine, left at five, never bothered to get to know anyone.” 

Rey leans toward Rose like a vulture vying for table scraps. “So it _isn’t_ just me, then.” 

“Of course not. Though he does have a weird fixation with riling you up, specifically.” 

“It’s that stupid office,” Rey grumbles. “He’s still got a grudge over it. And he never _leaves._ ” She thinks of his eyes, so dark they appear nearly black, lingering on her skin like the afterglow of a sunburn. “He’s always there, watching me. I barely even see him get up to go to the bloody _bathroom-”_

Finn snorts. “That’s because he’s got a massive stick up his _-”_

 _“Sh,”_ Rey hisses, swatting at Finn’s shoulder. “He might hear-”

The door to the kitchen swings open and in saunters Ben Solo, as though summoned. He looks achingly cool in a light blue button-up, cuffed at the elbows to reveal a pair of lean, ropey forearms. His long hair is windswept and pushed back over his forehead in a way that can’t be manufactured with styling products. Rey wonders if, in his exchange for selling his soul to Satan, Ben had been gifted a lifetime of good hair days. 

He pauses in the doorway, appraising the three of them scowlingly. His eyes narrow in on Rey’s hand, which is still hovering in place over Finn’s shoulder. She slowly withdraws it, as though reprimanded.

“Hello, Ben,” Rey says icily. 

Ben cocks one brow into his hairline. “Working hard, I see,” he mutters. 

When he turns around to pour himself a cup of coffee, Rey sticks her tongue out at him in a display that she realizes is terribly childish but doesn’t care to resist. Rose and Finn devolve into quiet hysterics.

“When you’re done sticking your tongue out at me,” he drawls, “Dameron was looking for you.”

Rey huffs, squinting at Ben’s back. He must have been looking in the reflection of the coffee pot. Either that, or he really does have eyes in the back of his head, which would explain his other inhuman characteristics. 

“Why, thank you, Ben,” she sneers, standing. 

“No problem at all, _little scavenger._ ” 

Rey’s jaw tenses. On their third day working together, Rey had accidentally dropped her phone in the rubbish bin at the precise moment that Ben decided to walk by, and thus the asinine nickname was born. 

“I told you not to call me that,” she spits. “And I wasn’t _scavenging_. I dropped my phone, as I’ve told you.” 

Ben nudges the kitchen door open with his hip, coffee mug in hand. He takes it black, of course, like his soul. “Feel free to report me to HR,” he replies. 

She tosses Rose and Finn one last despairing glance before following Ben into the hallway. 

“What did Poe want?”

He glances at her down the long barrel of his nose. “How should I know? He’s _your_ boss.” 

“You are such a …” Rey trails off, fixing her glare up at the fluorescent overhead light. 

“A what, Rey?” Ben goads. He bends down, and suddenly, he’s so close that his breath drifts over the curve of her neck like a warm caress. He smells like Altoids and something spicy, like bergamot. “Just say it.”

“Shut up.” 

He straightens back to his full height. “I’m such a ‘Shut up’? Is that British slang, or something?”

 _You’re such an insufferable twat,_ is what Rey wants to say. _You drive me insane. You look at me and I feel like I’m on fire, and I don’t know what that means except that I need desperately for it to stop._

But she says none of that, because Rey Hutton is nothing if not polite. It’s why she’s so likable, after all. 

“No, it’s not British slang,” she grits. 

Evidently, they’ve arrived at Poe’s office. She blinks at the door dazedly. “Well, then…” she glances up at Ben, tapping her foot haughtily. 

He crosses his arms over his chest, watching her with his head tilted, as though trying to decipher something in her expression. 

“This is the part where you leave me alone,” Rey adds.

“You know,” he says slowly, “You should just call me an asshole. I know you want to.”

“What is that supposed to-”

“You don’t have to be so nice all the time.” Ben shrugs. “I’m sure as hell not.” 

“And look how far that’s gotten you,” Rey mutters.

And something strange happens. To the untrained eye, it might have appeared, just then, that she had hurt him. His mouth pops open and then snaps shut once more, a strange little frown twitching at the edges of his lips. But then he blinks and then it’s passed, as transient as a cloud passing over the sun. 

“Right,” he sneers, all of his usual cruelty restored in his expression. “Enjoy your meeting, scavenger.” 

“I will,” Rey snaps. 

She’s gotten the last word, but when he turns to walk away, it doesn’t feel like a definitive victory.

  
  
  


Poe Dameron’s office looks like a warzone. 

There are papers everywhere, for starters. Half-read manuscripts and quarterly reports and pitches. His desk occupies much of the clutter, though the corduroy sofa and coffee table in the far corner of the room aren’t faring much better. 

The only meticulous part of his office is the massive bookshelf that yawns along the length of the west wall. Ironically, he’s actually indexed his library according to the Dewey decimal system. His collection is sprawling and illustrious and full of rare first-editions that Rey made him promise to bequeath to her after he dies. 

“Hey, Rey! Come here. I need to show you something.” 

Needless to say, the chaos pains Rey’s color-coded, sticky-noted, bullet-journaled soul. “Poe,” Rey groans, carefully wading across the room. “How many times have I told you that I can _help_ with this?”

He grins wryly from behind a stack of folders. “It’s _organized_ chaos, Rey. It all makes sense in my head. Here, look at this.” Poe pulls a sheet of paper from a stack he’d been thumbing through and hands it to her. 

Rey squints at the print. “This is a … job application,” she mutters dumbly. She skims over the text, then glances back at Poe. 

“A job application for an editor position,” Poe adds. 

“No way,” Rey whispers incredulously. “A role finally opened up?” 

She’d been waiting for months for a promotion from Junior Editor, but the merger had made the fate of the role uncertain. Her heart thrums in her chest as she considers the possibility of owning her own manuscripts, managing her own authors. 

Poe grins crookedly, leaning over to tap his index finger against the paper. “A role with your name on it.”

“Poe,” Rey breathes. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re a shoe-in, Rey. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want you, but these First Order folks…” Poe turns to the window, scowling. “If it were up to me, you’d already have the job. But we have to play by their rules, now that we’re merged. They want a full interview process, opened to internal and external applicants.”

Rey nods. “I understand.”

“But I’ll be here to coach you throughout the process. Let me know when you’re ready to apply and I’ll look over your resume.”

She folds the paper neatly and tucks it into her skirt pocket. “I won’t let you down,” she murmurs earnestly. 

“Of course not,” Poe replies, grinning. “You don’t have it in you.”

  
  
  


Naturally, Rey is riding on a high when she walks back to her desk. By the time she drops into her chair and unlocks her computer, she’s already envisioning which fonts she’s going to use on her revamped resume. 

“What’s got you so smiley?” Ben grumbles. He’s watching her with the tip of his red pen still poised over the manuscript he’d been copy-editing from the slush pile. It’s all marked up in the margins, probably with notes like, “ _Hopelessly incompetent drivel,”_ and “ _You may as well give up writing forever.”_

The merger’s floor plan fiasco results in an awkward office layout that places Rey’s and Ben’s desks across from one another like battleships. Being positioned in the corner of the building, the polygon shape is both an aesthetic eyesore and logistical nightmare. 

The other disastrous consequence of the arrangement is that she’s forced to be alone in a room with Ben Solo for multiple hours at any given time. 

“None of your business,” she replies primly. 

“Oh?” He raises one dark brow at her. 

“Nope.” 

Ben leans back in his chair and folds his palms over his abdomen. “I see. So I bet it has nothing to do with the editor position that just opened up.” 

Her gaze snaps up to find him watching her placidly. “How did you know about that?”

“Phasma told me. She wants me to apply.” 

Rey hisses and pushes away from her desk, as though to maximize the distance between them. Unfortunately, given the cramped layout, this decision has the unintended consequence of knocking the back of her chair against the wall. 

Ben’s smirk grows wicked. “My, Rey,” he chides. “You wouldn’t want to give people the wrong idea about what we’re doing in here.” 

“Shut up,” Rey hisses. “Or else I’ll-”

“Report me to HR?” Ben pantomimes a dramatic yawn. “Go ahead. They’ve already got plenty on you, _Miss Hutton_.” His tongue curls around her name like smoke and sends a pesky little shiver down her spine. She crosses her legs, dutifully ignoring the weight that’s settled between them. 

Rey sniffs haughtily. “You’re not going to apply for the job. You’re just messing with me.” 

“Wow,” Ben says, pulling open a drawer to his desk. “You think rather highly of yourself.” His fingers drift tauntingly over the contents of the drawer. “Hm… where _did_ I put that application?” 

“Come off it, Ben.”

“Ah! Here it is.” He withdraws the piece of paper with a dramatic flourish. “Nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, right?” 

Rey drums her fingertips against her desk. 

His gaze narrows. “What are you thinking?” 

“I’m thinking,” she mumbles at the ceiling, “That I’d like to kill you, but homicide doesn’t typically bode well for background checks.” 

Ben laughs, a breathy sort of sound that opens his face pleasantly. Rey studies his expression with clinical focus, in part because he rarely smiles, and in an even larger, more embarrassing part, because it makes him look quite handsome. 

“What?” He snaps. 

Rey blinks and turns back to her computer. “Nothing,” she mutters. She forces her mouth into a diplomatic smile as she opens her resume file, and when she turns back to Ben, she’s pleased to find that he’s still focused on her, if only because it means she’s gotten under his skin.

“Nothing at all, Ben.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey couldn’t help the certifiable shit-eating grin that came with the knowledge that Ben Solo did not, in fact, completely loathe her. He had done something _chivalrous_ for her, at that.

Something happened. A very specific something that Rey and Ben don’t talk about. 

It was a month into the merger, and, in an attempt to boost office morale and team bonding, or something, Poe had suggested everyone take an early Friday and grab drinks at the dingy little dive bar down the street from the office. Rey was already in a bad mood about some argument she and Ben had gotten into, and by the third espresso martini, she was piss drunk and on a roll. 

“And another thing,” Rey slurred, slapping her palm down on the edge of the bartop. “He’s always making fun of my accent. As though I can _help_ being born in bloody England.” 

Finn peered at Rey warily over the lip of his beer bottle. “Rey, you know that I support you, but you might want to, er… quiet down a bit, hey?” 

“He never shows up to these things anyway.” Rey scowled at a spot on the scuffed floor. “Too _cool_ for us, apparently.”

Rose snorted. “He probably has a slam poetry reading to attend.” 

“An indie film screening,” Rey added. “At some theater where the popcorn costs, like, ten dollars.” She tipped her drink back and emptied its contents in a single swig. 

Rose plucked Rey’s martini glass out of her hand. “You know we don’t like the guy either,” she said, placing the glass on the bartop. “But Finn is right.”

“It just isn’t fair,” Rey whined. She was vaguely aware of how petulant she sounded and completely incapable of helping herself. “Why _me_?”

“Kill him with kindness, Peanut,” Finn offered. “If he doesn’t see how great you are, he’s an even bigger idiot than we’re giving him credit for.” 

“It’s not like it’ll change anything. The man hates me. Hates _everything_ , it seems.” 

“Is that so?” 

The response came from somewhere over her shoulder, long and slow, as though the words had been half-melted by the sun. His voice always sounded out of time, somehow, a rolling, smoky baritone more fitting for a vintage speakeasy than the twenty-first century. 

Her nipples pitched in an involuntary response. 

“Fuck,” Rey whispered. 

Rose and Finn wore identical expressions of horror, their gazes drifting between Rey and Ben as though spectating a tennis match. Slowly, Rey turned to face him. He had changed out of his usual work attire and was instead wearing jeans and a mouth-wateringly soft-looking black cashmere sweater, and he was looking at her as though she was dirt beneath his leather wingtips. 

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Rey said.

“Well,” Ben replied mockingly, twitching his fingers in a limp imitation of jazz hands. “Here I am.” 

Rey blew a slow breath between her teeth. “I can explain-”

“No need,” Ben interjected harshly. “You’ve made yourself clear.” 

“Ben,” She pleaded. “Just hang on, please.”

And then he turned on his heel and left. 

Finn glanced at Rey, his expression pinched with sympathy. “On second thought,” he mumbled, “Maybe we should get you another drink.”

Ben spent the rest of the evening scowling and studiously avoiding having any semblance of fun. When the time had come for Rey to leave, he was still hovering by the door, his expression thunderous as he sipped an IPA and chatted with Phasma. 

Of _course_ he drank IPAs. 

“I’m going to head out,” Rey grumbled. 

“No way you’re taking the Falcon,” Finn protested. “I’ll get you an Uber.”

“It’s fine. I can order it.” The confrontation had dulled her buzz and left in its wake a lingering uneasiness that was as unwanted as it was frustrating to acknowledge. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

After making her rounds, Rey walked outside and into the cool evening. It was late spring and the air was thick with the remnants of a storm, all damp ambiance she’d grown to love about the Pacific Northwest. 

She’d moved from London after she and Poe had met there at a book expo and he had, in his characteristically spontaneous fashion, offered her a job on the spot. She was packing her bags less than a month later, and the entire ordeal was as fortuitous as it was insane, in retrospect, but she regretted none of it. 

Well, almost none of it. She could have done without meeting Ben Solo. 

The street was quiet, and save for the occasional pedestrian, she was completely alone. Rey ordered an Uber and then leaned against the brick wall and closed her eyes. Perhaps she could have even drifted off to sleep, given that it was such a pleasant evening. 

Right up until he came out to ruin it. 

“Sleeping in alleyways?” 

Rey’s eyes snapped open to find Ben watching her in the buttery glow of a streetlamp. “That’s new.” 

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Her voice was still thick with alcohol and it made her feel oddly vulnerable. A verbal spar with Ben Solo required immense concentration, something Rey had lost somewhere between the second and third martini. 

“Sure could’ve fooled me.”

“Whatever,” Rey spat petulantly. 

Ben shoved his hands into the pockets of those irritatingly sexy jeans and rolled his eyes. She hadn’t realized “irritatingly sexy” was a descriptor that could be applied to clothing until that clothing was on Ben Solo’s body. “Do you need a ride home, scavenger?”

“Don’t call me that,” Rey snapped reflexively. “And no, I don’t. I ordered an Uber.”

A beat passed in which neither moved. 

“Will that be all, Ben?”

“Yep,” he replied slowly, letting his lips pop around the ‘p’ sound. 

“Then why are you still standing here?”

“I didn’t realize it was illegal to stand outside on public property.”

Rey swept her arm out, gesturing to the empty street. “There are plenty of places to stand, yet you chose the one right next to me?”

A bemused grin twitched at the edges of his mouth. “I like this spot.”

“Why?”

“Because it annoys you.”

Rey ignored him after that, pretending to be completely enraptured with all of the zero texts she’d gotten during the span of their conversation. It was only when the Uber pulled up to the curb a few minutes later that Rey realized what he had been doing. 

She paused before climbing in the silver Civic. “Wait. Were you _waiting_ with me?”

Ben’s impassive expression betrayed nothing. “It’s late, and you’re drunk. Of course I wasn’t going to let you stand out here on your own.” He frowned. “Why are you smiling like that? You look insane.”

“You know, Ben,” Rey said slowly. “That’s pretty gentlemanly of you.”

His mouth twisted into a flat line. “Well, don’t expect this to be a regular occurrence.” 

Rey couldn’t help the certifiable shit-eating grin that came with the knowledge that Ben Solo did not, in fact, completely loathe her. He had done something _chivalrous_ for her, at that. She twitched her fingers in a wave over the hood of the car. “Goodnight, Ben.”

By the following Monday their dynamic had reverted back to normal, for all intents and purposes. But his disquieting expression from that night lingered in Rey’s mind for days after, his dark gaze watchful and placid and fixed squarely onto her in the glow of a streetlamp. 

Almost as though he cared. 

  
  
  


The week begins on a dove-gray shirt day. 

Ben Solo is nothing if not predictable. He takes his coffee black, but his tea with one splash of cream. He uses a dark blue ballpoint pen, except when editing. When he’s exhausted the blue pen, he switches to black. He parts his hair on the right, cuffs his shirts three times, never clashes black slacks with brown loafers. Perhaps his most predictable quality, though, is the unfailing order in which he rotates his dress shirts. 

The order is this: White, off-white stripe, cream, pale yellow, mustard, baby blue, robin’s-egg blue, dove-gray, navy, and black. 

“So predictable,” Rey murmurs. 

Ben looks up from his paperwork. “What?” 

Rey sighs airily. “Oh, nothing.”

They return to idle work for approximately thirty seconds before Ben evidently decides that he can’t take it anymore. He tosses his pen onto his desk with a metallic clatter. 

“Out with it, Rey,” he snaps. 

Rey blinks, feigning ignorant. “Out with what?” 

He flicks his wrist in a vague, goading motion. “Whatever you meant before. ‘So predictable.’” 

Rey leans back slowly in her chair. The realization that he’s interested in what she has to say has the effect of heightening her senses, as though the air has been tuned to a new frequency. “Oh. I was just referring to the shirts.”

His gaze roves over her like a cold breeze. “What are you talking about?”

“White, off white stripe, cream, pale yellow, mustard…” She ticks off her fingers as she talks. “You know, you always wear them in the same order.”

“Careful,” Ben murmurs. “You’re verging on an HR violation.”

“Noticing your attire isn’t an HR violation,” Rey replies. 

“Excessive comments related to appearance. Chapter two, section fourteen of the handbook.” He sits back and twirls in an idle circle in his chair, looking princely. 

“It wasn’t _excessive,”_ Rey mutters. 

“While we’re on the subject,” he adds. “Cute skirt. You do own a wide variety of produce-related clothing, don’t you?” 

Rey blinks down at her skirt. It’s pleated and dotted with little pink strawberries. She’d gotten it on sale at a boutique outlet with Rose. “‘Wide variety’ is an exaggeration. It’s just this, and the…” She trails off, chagrined. 

Ben smirks. “The blouse with the avocados on it. So very _cute_.” 

She stands and slowly smooths out her skirt. His gaze tracks the motion as her fingertip lingers over the jutting point of her hipbone a beat longer than strictly necessary. Ben perks up in what can only be described as a Pavlovian response. 

When she speaks, her voice adopts a husky purr Rey heard on a made-for-TV soap opera once. “Cute, is it?” 

Suddenly, he’s at rapt attention — spine straight, jaw taut, fist curled around his computer mouse so tightly his knuckles have blanched. 

Rey has thoroughly, unequivocally spun him out. The victory tastes delicious.

“Well, I guess I’d rather that than _predictable_ , Ben,” she murmurs, turning on her heel to leave. 

He’s uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the afternoon. When he does address her, it’s in clipped fragments and fleeting glances. 

Later, Rey asks Finn to join her on a coffee run that serves mostly as a flimsy excuse to get away from Ben. She relays the shirt conversation in all of its gory detail while Finn listens and gamely resists interjecting to point out how obsessive she must look. 

Finn hums musingly. “Maybe you broke his circuit board.” 

Rey snorts. “It’s impenetrable. I’ve tried.” 

“Seriously, though. It’s probably because he’s into you.”

Rey coughs, sputtering rivulets of Americano onto her blouse. “Shit,” she mutters, leaning around Finn to grab a wad of napkins. “You’re insane.”

“You’re an attractive single woman.” Finn shrugs. “Men are prehistoric.” 

She dabs ineffectually at the stain, which now resembles a lumpy, misshapen Texas. “Ben is not into me. He’s not into anything beyond making my life miserable.” 

Finn fixes her with a flat look. “Hmm.” 

“What?” Rey snaps. 

He drums his fingers on the table. “Do you find him attractive?” 

She considers the question objectively. She’d be remiss not to admit that some base part of her _had_ wondered how those broad, steady palms would feel against her skin. Whether that smart mouth was good for activities other than spending her every last nerve. 

Her voice is a reluctant grumble. “When he isn’t speaking, sure.” 

“Well,” Finn replies coyly. He gathers the soiled napkins and volleys them into the nearby rubbish. “There’s your answer.” 

  
  


After lunch, Poe and Phasma formally break the news of the editor position. 

“In order to keep the hiring process ethical, we will be conducting formal interviews,” Phasma says. Every square inch of her is coiffed, pressed, taut. Her scrutiny slides across the conference room like a heat-seeking missile. “Additionally, there will be a change in the reporting chain.” 

Rey glances up as Phasma continues in her brisk clip. “Whoever is selected for the position will manage the junior editors. This structural change will allow Poe and I to focus on the more operational tasks at hand.”

Rey’s gaze skims over the crowd before finding Poe, who already watches her with a knowing grin. This would mean that she would be Ben’s _boss_. He’d never again be able to tease her stylistic choices or call her demeaning nicknames. He would have to _respect_ her. 

As soon as the meeting ends, Rey makes a beeline for Ben’s retreating form. She has to trot to keep pace with his maddeningly long legs all the way down the hall and into the kitchen. 

“Pretty interesting meeting,” she prompts, her tone conversational. 

“Was it?” He reaches over Rey’s head to pull a mug down from the top shelf. 

“I’d say so.” 

Ben hums noncommittally. His big hands methodically measure the coffee grounds before spooning them into the filter. Rey usually just pours it straight from the bag. “Why is that?” 

Rey pops her hip against the countertop. “Well, for one thing, you’ll have to report to me.” 

Ben barks a humorless laugh. “What makes you so sure you’ve got the role?”

“Poe told me I’m a shoe-in.”

“Funny,” Ben replies. “Phasma told _me_ the same thing, scavenger.” 

Rey fixes her gaze on the ceiling and counts back from ten before replying. “When I’m your boss,” she says, “You’ll won’t be able to call me that stupid nickname.”

“When I’m _your_ boss,” Ben replies, “I’ll implement a dress code that strictly prohibits clothing with produce on it.” He gives her a haughty once-over. “Or coffee stains.”

Rey glowers at the stain on our blouse. “When I’m your boss, I’m going to be convicted of murder.”

“Always with the homicide threats.” Ben clicks his tongue. She huffs and pivots toward the door, but then his palm is right next to her head, pushing it shut. She twists and finds herself backed between the door and Ben Solo. His lean arms bracket her in on either side and the look on his face is positively devilish.

Suddenly, Rey can’t speak. She opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a pathetic, breathy sigh. He bows his head so that he’s eye-level with her. There has never been so much Ben Solo, everywhere, all at once. 

“When I’m your boss,” he murmurs. His warm breath drifts over her face like a filthy caress. “I’m going to work you so fucking hard.” 

For a single, catastrophic moment, Rey wonders if he’s going to kiss her. Ben lifts one of his palms off of the door and hovers it at her side, the pad of his thumb just barely brushing her ribcage. His eyes drift shut, and when they open once more, they appear as dark and depthless as river water. His mouth parts just enough for Rey’s lips to slant over them. 

But then Ben blinks, as though remembering himself. He steps back and pulls a hand through his hair, rendering him artfully mussed and sinfully fuckable. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. 

Rey presses the tip of her finger to her mouth, as though holding the memory of the sensation there. “What the _hell,_ ” she breathes, “Was that?”

“Just forget it happened,” Ben says. 

“Sure, will do,” Rey sneers. “I’ll just delete the memory of you almost _kissing me-_ ”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Ben snaps. “It was stupid.”

Rey blinks. “Right,” she mutters. 

Something like guilt passes over his expression. “I didn’t mean-”

“I know what you meant,” Rey says. “It’s fine.” 

She spends the rest of the day militantly avoiding him, which is a valiant effort, being that they share a hundred square feet of workspace. But despite her best attempts, the imprint of his expression lingers behind her eyelids like a sunspot. 

It almost feels wrong to be thinking of Ben Solo while laying in bed. Too intimate, somehow. But the last thing she thinks of before she drifts off to sleep is his harsh growl, the wash of hot breath against her cheek.

_I’m going to work you so fucking hard._

It’s no surprise, then, that she’d have the filthiest dream of her life about him that very same night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who have read "The Hating Game" know where this dirty dream sequence is headed ;)
> 
> Comments and kudos are so appreciated! Thanks for all of the love on chapter one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their bizarre interaction in the kitchen had left her feeling as though Ben had gained an upper hand in their little game, and that simply wouldn’t do.

In the dream, Rey is innately aware of a man’s presence, though she can’t immediately place his identity. He lingers tauntingly beyond her periphery, close enough that his proximity overwhelms her, but distant enough that she feels half-wild with want. 

His lips are at her neck, pressed lightly over her fluttering pulse point. “You’re nervous,” he says. It isn’t a question. 

Rey cants her hips against his weight and he sucks his teeth in a reprimand, shifting so that his knees straddle her hips. “Now, Rey,” he mutters. “Not yet.” His palms are rough against her skin, drifting hot trails over her waist, her sides. The tip of his finger idly teases her nipple through her shirt until it puckers. 

“Who are you?”

His chuckle is a warm rush of breath against her ear. “You don’t know?” 

His fingers nimbly unbutton her shirt as though unwrapping a Christmas present. Rey hisses when the tip of his tongue darts out to trace a slick, lazy path over her nipple. The heat of his breath and gentle scrape of his teeth against the sensitive skin of her areola is nearly overstimulating. Boneless with desire, she relaxes further into the illusion. There’s something in the man’s precise, taunting movements that teases out a memory. 

_Ben._

Her eyes fly open, and suddenly, she is face-to-face with the cosmic force of Ben Solo’s undivided attention. His expression somehow reads hot and cold all at once, all teeth and edges, sharp enough to smart.

“You,” she gasps. 

Instead of answering, he busies himself with her other breast, sucking it into his mouth in one single, punishing motion. She gasps at the rush of stinging pleasure. 

The realization that she’s having a sex dream about _Ben,_ of all people, is nearly jarring enough to shatter the precarious illusion, but she resists wakefulness with another cant of her hips, a frantic grasp in the dark. 

When he presses his weight further down on her, she can feel the sizable bulge of his erection in his jeans. She realizes, with faint amusement, that her brain had the good sense to put him in the outfit from that night at the dive bar. 

Rey’s tongue darts out to travel across his lips and she finds that he tastes of salt and smoke and peppermint Altoids. Her fingers drift down to his waist and begin to work at the button of his jeans, but then Ben’s movements drift into an achingly slow pace, as though punishing her for her fervor. He rolls his hips over her and the feel of the rough denim against her sensitive clit nearly causes her to cry out. 

“I’m going to work you _so fucking hard._ ” He dips his head and his teeth scrape the hinge of her jaw punishingly. 

“Please,” she whispers. 

Rey's hand finds his in the dark and she shifts it over the silk lining of her panties. His index finger swirls lazily over her slit.

“You’re dripping for me,” he mumbles into her neck. “You want me, don’t you?”

Rey groans when he pushes aside her panties. When the pad of his fingertip brushes over her throbbing sex, suddenly, she couldn’t give a damn that she hates him. She’s never been so certain of anything more than her imminent need for Ben Solo’s magical fingers to be inside her, preferably yesterday. 

“ _Yes._ ”

The blare of her alarm cuts through the dream with the precision of a meat cleaver. Rey blinks into wakefulness, swatting blindly at her phone’s snooze button. Her bedsheets are slick with sweat, and a quick peek at her panties confirm what she already knows to be true. 

Dream-Ben has gotten her more wet than she’s been in _months_. 

Rey lays back down in an attempt to pick up where her dream left off, but it’s hopeless. She reasons that the dream likely sprung from her ongoing drought following her breakup with her earnest, sexually lackluster boyfriend of two years. She’d ended things before her move to the States and hasn’t had time to re-enter the dating scene, given how busy work has been. 

It could have been anyone. The cute security guard in her apartment building. Her neighbor, whose shirtless run circuit fortuitously passes by Rey’s house every morning. Hell, the guy who had delivered her pad Thai last weekend. As Rey showers away the evidence of the filthy dream, she ultimately decides that her subconscious horniness is in no way an indicator that she wants Ben Solo, sexually or otherwise. 

But then, standing in her towel in front of her wardrobe, her conversation with Finn surfaces in her mind unbidden _. Men are prehistoric._

Rey pauses over a skimpy little cocktail dress she’d picked up at a consignment shop in college.The silhouette is simple, black, just tasteful enough to keep things interesting. 

Their bizarre interaction in the kitchen had left her feeling as though Ben had gained an upper hand in their little game, and that simply wouldn’t do. As she pulls the dress off of its hanger, a plan solidifies in her mind. 

If yesterday’s near-kiss was some sort of ploy to weaken her defenses, she knows just the way to make him pay. 

Rey is standing outside of her office door when she realizes she’s made a grave mistake. 

The added plumpness the years had afforded her boobs and ass since her college days leaves the dress a little clingier than she anticipates. To make matters worse, the hemline falls to the middle of her thigh, owing to the effect of her appearing naked underneath the trench coat she’d hastily buttoned over it before running out the door. The whole vibe is slightly more _Pretty Woman_ than she might prefer.

Ben is already sitting, of course. She’s never gotten to work before him. She wonders if he sleeps under his desk. 

He glances up from his computer and scowls at her. “Are you planning on coming in, or will you be working from the hallway today?”

Rey shoots him a withering glance and settles in at her desk with her coat still on. She feels his eyes on her as she goes through the motions of logging in to her computer. 

“Are you cold, or something?”

Rey types in her password — IH8BENS0LO — before answering. “No.”

“Then why do you still have your coat on?”

When she looks up at him, she feels nearly overwhelmed with the memory of her dream. _I’m going to work you so fucking hard._

She swallows and looks away. “Why do you care?” 

“I don’t,” he snaps. 

“Okay, then.” 

He taps his pen against the edge of his desk in an even metronome. “I just think it’s weird, that’s all.” 

Rey’s gaze narrows onto a neutral spot on the ceiling. “Imagine how much work we could _both_ be getting done if you stopped worrying about my outfit choices.”

“I’m not _worried_.”

Their eyes meet over their computer screens. He’s wearing the neutral Ben Solo expression, a vague little imprint of a smirk like a crooked spit of road, one brow cocked challengingly into his hairline. She realizes that to concede now would be to admit defeat. 

With a gusty sigh, Rey stands and slowly walks to the coat rack, her fingers drifting teasingly over the buttons of her trench coat. Her feet drag against the carpet as though she’s wading through mud. 

“Some time today,” Ben drawls boredly. 

She peels off her coat and places it on her hanger. The metallic _shick_ splits the silence in the room like a thunder-crack. 

When Rey turns to face him, Ben’s expression is uncharacteristically youthful, nearly shy. He’s looking down, at first, and the fluorescent light glances over the planes of his cheeks in a way that softens the sharpness of his profile. His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip, and then, at length, he flicks his gaze from the floor and back onto her. His eyes drift up and down her body in slow, meticulous appraisal. 

And then, he opens his mouth and emits a low sort of choking noise in his throat that is so gratifying Rey can hardly breathe. She drifts back to her desk on a cloud. 

When he finally speaks, his voice is rough, sharp. “Got a hot date?” 

“Actually, I do,” she lies. The response slips out of her mouth before she can fully comprehend its gravity.

“Uh huh,” he murmurs skeptically. 

“Is that so hard to believe?” 

“No,” he replies. He leans back in his chair and twiddles his thumbs. “I just don’t believe that you’re telling the truth at this specific point in time.” 

“Well, it’s true.”

“Alright,” he says. “Where’s this date happening, then?” 

Rey pushes the tip of her tongue into her cheek as she spends a moment mulling over the details of her fabricated date. She settles on a bar and grille down the street from the office, a location she deems casual enough to pass as a plausible setting. “We’re meeting at Cantina at six,” she says, her tone lofty. 

“What a coincidence,” Ben replies. “I was planning on heading there after work.”

Her heart stutters as she scans his face for signs of deception. To her horror, his expression betrays nothing. 

“Is that so,” she mumbles, her voice breathy. She catches her reflection in her computer monitor and finds that her cheeks have drained of their color. “What a _coincidence_ indeed.”

“Quite,” he replies. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“It’s a big place.” 

When Ben replies, his voice is strangely earnest, devoid of its usual mocking edge. “I’m not so sure,” he says. “You’re hard to miss.” 

Rey squares her shoulders and marches up to Finn’s cubicle with all of the false bravado one can have when when faced with the imminent probability of mutually-assured destruction. 

“Do you remember that time you had the flu? I drove you home from work and you threw up in the Falcon.” 

Finn glances up from his work speculatively. “What are you on about?” 

“And do you remember how I didn’t even complain? Because,” Rey says, planting her palm over her heart. “I truly care about you.” 

“Oh, god,” Finn groans. Slowly, he locks his computer and then spins in his chair to face her. “What did you do?” 

“Nothing,” Rey replies. “Well, sort of. It’s a small something.” She holds her index finger and thumb an inch apart. “Basically nothing, really.” 

Finn’s mouth folds into a flat line. “You’re a horrible liar. You’re doing that blinking thing.”

“What blinking thing?”

“You’ve got this nervous tic.” He flutters his eyelids in an exaggerated demonstration. “Like this, but weirder.” 

“Do not,” Rey grumbles. 

“You need a favor, don’t you? You’ve gone off and dug yourself into a hole, and now you’re expecting me to help you out of it.” 

Rey is silent because that is exactly what happened. Finn groans with even more gusto. 

“It’s not that bad. I may just need you to, er…” she trails off. Finn watches her unblinkingly. He’s too proud to give her an out. 

“Go on, Rey,” Finn prompts flatly.

“I need to you, well…”

He narrows his eyes, drumming his fingertips against his kneecap in a slow, rhythmic pattern.

“I need you to … pretend to be on a date with me _-”_

“You what _?_ ” Finn hisses, leaning forward. “Are you out of your _mind_? No, actually,” he holds his index finger up. “Don’t answer that. I know you are.” 

Rey peers around the hallway outside of Finn’s cubicle before replying. “If you do me this one favor, I won’t ask for anything ever again."

“How did this happen?”

“Ben was teasing me about my outfit, so I told him I have a date at Cantina tonight,” Rey rushes. “And then he said that he’s going to Cantina tonight too, which I _know_ he just said to take the piss out of me-”

“Has it occurred to you that I’m _gay_?”

“Well, sure. But _Ben_ doesn’t know that.”

Finn scrubs his palms over his face. He sits quietly, his expression wrinkled with dismay. 

“There’s got to be another way out of this,” he murmurs. “Rose will have an idea.” 

Ten minutes later, Rey and Finn relay the situation to Rose in a conference room Rey desperately hopes no one needs to use in the imminent future. After she finishes, Rose blinks at the two of them and mutters a creative string of curses under her breath. Then she looks at Rey and says, not unkindly: “You’re an idiot.”

“I didn’t mean to say it,” Rey huffs, throwing her palms up. “It was just the first thing I could think of.” 

“We can’t use Finn,” Rose says. “He works here. Ben could report you to HR.” 

A pit settles in Rey’s stomach as she envisions the glee Ben would take in filing that report. He’d probably mark the day in his calendar.

She plants her face in her upturned palms. “What do we do?” 

Rose falls quiet with contemplation. “I could ask my sister for help,” she offers. “Her boyfriend might know someone we can set you up with.” 

Absently, Rey wonders how a single, idiotic wardrobe decision spiraled into a spontaneous blind date. She silently laments Ben Solo and his stupid smirks and sex dream cameos. 

With a resigned sigh, she turns to Rose and nods. “Alright. Let’s do it.” 

Just as Rey is quite certain the day can’t get any worse, the Falcon breaks down. 

She’s parked in the garage, one hand idly stroking the steering wheel as though consoling a wounded animal. Given her current situation, she fervently hopes it will inspire her car to decide to run again. 

“Come on,” she whines. “Not now.” 

Rey twists the key again and the Falcon sputters uselessly and then falls quiet. She sinks into her seat and squeezes her eyes shut. It seems highly probable, then, that the universe has conspired to spite her. 

“Fucking _Solo,_ ” she mutters bitterly. 

She jumps at the quiet rap of knuckles against her window. “Jesus,” she gasps, rolling her window down. “You scared me.” 

Ben watches her warily, his hands burrowed in his pockets. It’s a navy shirt day and the color compliments his complexion devastatingly. “Car troubles?” 

“It’s fine. It always does this.”

“What exactly is the ‘this’ you're referring to?” He replies dryly. “The part where it stops working?” 

Rey leans forward until her forehead rests against the steering wheel. She doesn’t have the energy to come up with a witty retort, so she simply sighs, which somehow functions as a better response than she’d be able to articulate. 

“Hey,” Ben says. His tone is uncharacteristically soft, very nearly earnest. “Rey. I’ll give you a ride to Cantina.” 

Rey pops one eye open and peers at him warily.

Ben shrugs. “I was already headed there, remember?” 

“Isn’t it a general rule that you’re not supposed to get in cars with strangers?”

His expression flattens. “I’m not a stranger.”

“Unfortunately,” she mutters. 

Ben huffs humorlessly. “Gee, remind me to offer you favors more often. Since you’re just _so grateful-”_

“Did you expect me to grovel?” 

“Do you want a ride or not?” He growls. As though on cue, a crack of lightning splits the sky between the concrete slats of the parking garage’s ceiling. Ben meaningfully flicks his gaze up at the sky and then back to Rey. There’s no way she can walk to the restaurant now, even if she wanted to. 

Which is how she ends up in Ben’s economical, purring sports car. It is exactly the car she’d have expected him to have, all dark leather and heady man smell. She wishes desperately to root around in his glove box to see what kinds of items he keeps in there. 

“Thanks for the ride,” she mumbles. 

His hands drift over the steering wheel as he maneuvers the car down a narrower side street. “The ride to your _date,”_ he replies, drawing the word out with syrupy cadence. “The date that definitely exists.” 

“I actually do have a date, you know,” Rey huffs. Her tone is remarkably haughty for the amount of scrambling she had to do to actually _secure_ said date, but Paige had actually come through and passed Rey’s number to a guy she’d gone to college with. 

“Uh huh. What’s his name?”

"I don’t know,” Rey squints down at the contact in her phone. “Hux, or something?”

When Rey looks back at Ben, he’s gone so still that, for a moment, she wonders if he’s seen a ghost. She peers at the street ahead and finds it absent of any paranormal creatures.

“Are you alright?” 

Ben methodically flexes each of his fingers around the steering wheel. His mouth is a mean little hyphen. “What _,_ ” he murmurs, very slowly, “did you say?”

She’s never seen him like this before and the effect is nearly disorienting. Rey blinks, as though willing his expression back to its usual faint, smirking bemusement. “What are you on about? I told you I’ve got a date with-”

“ _Hux,_ ” Ben spits with the inflection one might reserve for words such as _infectious disease._ He’s all hard edges, silhouetted darkly against the rolling gray outside. His brows are drawn low, jaw twitching with restraint. 

When he speaks, his voice is a low, rolling tremble. “You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me _._ ” 

Rey is aghast. “You _know_ him?” 

The stoplight flicks to green and Ben accelerates so sharply that Rey’s head snaps back against the headrest. “We used to work together. I thought…” he runs his hand over his jaw. “ _Jesus,_ Rey, I thought you made the stupid date up.” 

Rey palms at the back of her neck irritably. “Then why are you giving me a ride?”

“I don’t know,” he snaps. “It seems I lack good judgement where you’re concerned.” 

They lapse into tense silence. The deafening tick of the blinker and the scrape of the windshield wipers toll like a death march.   


Rey huffs humorlessly, sinking into her seat. “All because of a bloody dress,” she mumbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are picking up! If you're liking this, please do feel free to let me know. Thanks for all the love thus far!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben commands a presence even without intending to, but here, in a pressurized container that smells like worn leather and spicy cologne, Rey feels nearly faint with overwhelm. It’s as though he’s been multiplied.

Truthfully speaking, Ben Solo isn’t _actually_ easy to despise.

Rey imagines that they might have even been friends, had they met in an alternate universe devoid of corner offices and petty squabbles. For one thing, he’s quite funny when he’s not being so damn ornery. Occasionally, during one of their verbal spars, he’ll supply such a witty retort that Rey will turn it over in her head in the days following, wishing she’d thought of it first. 

Hating him really _is_ so damn exhausting. 

Rey chances a tentative glance in his direction and quickly confirms that his mood hasn’t improved. He stares straight ahead, his dark gaze churning with ire. If looks could kill, she’d be dead on arrival. 

Ben pulls into the parking lot. Ahead, Cantina glows through the mist like a grease-scented beacon. Pragmatically, she reasons that even if the pseudo-date sucks, she’ll probably get a decent meal out of it. 

She settles on the unfortunate fact that she’ll need to be the one to break the silence and turns to him, her lip drawn between her teeth. “So,” she says slowly. “You know this guy?”

Ben flicks his car off with his pointer finger. He has one of those fancy keyless buttons. “Like I said,” he replies, his voice tight, “We used to work together.” 

Their proximity thrums like a live wire. Ben commands a presence even without intending to, but here, in a pressurized container that smells like worn leather and spicy cologne, Rey feels nearly faint with overwhelm. It’s as though he’s been multiplied. 

She cracks the passenger window and discretely draws in a lungful of the cool draft. 

“What’re you doing?” 

“Getting some air, if that’s alright with you,” Rey quips. She glances at her phone to find that Hux is evidently running a few minutes late. “Where did you used to work?”

“Snoke Industries,” he mutters.

“Holy _shit,_ ” Rey breathes. She whirls on him, her mouth agape. “You worked for _Snoke_?”

Snoke Industries, a sprawling publishing conglomerate known for the voracious appetite with which it gobbles up struggling media companies, is revered and loathed in near-equal measure in the publishing spheres. A position at Snoke practically guarantees a connection to the upper echelon of industry giants. It also doesn’t hurt that their entry-level salaries alone nearly double Rey’s. She imagines he must have taken a significant pay cut to come work for First Order.

Ben tosses her a look. “I’m not exactly proud of it.”

“What made you leave?”

“Phasma offered me a position.”

Rey hums musingly. “Why’d you take it? It can’t have been the pay.” 

Ben sighs, shifting uncomfortably. His jaw works as he considers his reply. “I needed to leave the company, and she provided a means to do so. The salary was secondary.” 

“I see.” She pauses. “I assume you don’t want to talk about why?”

“You’d assume correctly.”

Rey falls quiet, her thumb tracing a repetitive path back and forth over her lower lip. She can feel Ben’s eyes on her in her periphery.

“What are you thinking?” He asks.

She pauses. “Does Hux still work there?” 

Ben frowns, tipping his head back against the headrest. A dark lock spills over his forehead and her fingers itch with the urge to brush it behind his ear. “Yes.”

“Is that why you hate him?”

“You sure do have a lot of questions,” Ben grits. His thumbs tap a droll metronome against the steering wheel in a gesture Rey has come to recognize as a restless tic. “And I never said that I hate him.”

Rey snorts. “You looked like you wanted to kill him when I mentioned his name.”

For a long moment, Ben is so quiet that Rey wonders whether he heard her. She opens her mouth to repeat herself, but then he’s barreling on, his tone clipped. “It’s not specific to him. It - it could have been anyone.”

“What does that mean?” 

Ben pulls his hand over his face. He looks completely overcome and Rey hasn’t the faintest idea why. When he turns his face toward the sunroof, moonlight falls into the contours of his profile and renders him nearly monochromatic, all inky blacks and bleached whites, a picture of consternation. If Rey were an artist, she supposes she’d capture it in charcoal. She’d call it _Man in Agony._ “Jesus, you’re really making me spell it out for you.” 

Rey’s lips part in an exasperated sigh. “Spell _what_ out?”

Ben turns to her. His gaze is so dark she worries she might fall into it. She leans forward reflexively and it feels as though she’s toeing the edge of the void. 

His hands find her shoulders in the dark and it feels recklessly sensible, somehow. He drifts a lazy circuit down the curve of her arm, the pad of his fingertips warm and rough against her skin. “You really are clueless,” he mutters. Rey sighs when his hands drift up, splaying across the quivering column of her neck. 

Her eyes flutter shut. “Are you finally going to kill me?”

Ben threads his hands through her hair and gently guides her face towards his. She feels his sigh against her mouth. “Do you ever stop talking?”

Rey's eyes fly open in defiance at the same time that he presses his lips to hers. He kisses the same way he argues, the same way he does _everything,_ really. With bold, self-assured strokes and careful precision. He edges on the verge of too-rough, his movements sharp, teasing — he nips at her lip, clinks his teeth against hers, runs feverish, hurried paths over her face with his hands.

She watches him with eyes wide open, as though committing his expression to memory. He looks impish and deliberate, his handsome features taut with trembling restraint. 

Her eyes drift shut as she leans in experimentally, curling her palm around his shoulder and beckoning him closer. Ben edges his tongue against her lips and Rey parts them in acquiescence, breathing him in with a sigh. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ben groans. She feels it rumble straight through to her core, like rainwater seeking root. Rey curls her fists around his collar and leans in for another kiss, but he pauses, withdrawing at the last moment. 

“Rey,” he murmurs. “Look at me.” 

Rey blinks and finds him watching her intently, his pupils blown wide, lips parted and kiss-swollen. He’s watching her so closely that she feels naked under his inspection. 

“What?” Rey pants. Her mouth twists into an irritable scowl at the loss of contact.

Ben tilts his head, smirking, as though confirming something in her own expression. He curves his hands around her hips and then, with a low grunt, picks her up and shifts her over him so that she’s straddling him, her knees pressed against the soft leather back of the driver’s seat. She’s never been handled like this before, so competently. He exists in a different stratosphere from all of the polite, careful men she had seen before him. Poised in his sprawling lap, she feels a bit like a porcelain doll. 

“Thank God for tinted windows,” he mutters dryly, his dark eyes narrowed onto her. He rakes his tongue over his bottom lip, looking wolfish. 

“What are you-”

Ben pivots his hips in one fluid motion, creating taunting, warm friction against her already-slick panties. 

“Jesus,” Rey gasps. She rolls her hips and feels his cock twitch in his pants in response, and then his expression melts into bald hunger, his movements suddenly desperate, animalistic. He fists his hand in the hemline of her dress and yanks her closer, groaning when she makes contact with his growing bulge. 

“I’ve been thinking about this stupid fucking dress all day,” Ben growls. His fingers shove the soft material aside until he finds her lace panties. He groans, tilting his head back against the headrest. His eyes roll so far back that the whites of his eyes reflect the moonlight. 

“Your panties have donuts on them,” He mumbles. Little white donuts dotted with pink sprinkles. The day of the week is printed over her ass. He wants her so badly he can hardly think straight.

Rey flushes, embarrassed. “Well, I wasn’t expecting _this_ to happen,” she huffs. “I do own sexier undergarments, you know-”

“It’s adorable. All of your stupid outfits are. That’s why I’m always teasing you.” Those big hands drift over the seam of her panties, his palms closing around the lush curve of her ass. “Because all I can think about is bending you over our desks and taking you right there, in front of everyone. It’s terribly distracting.” She yelps when he snaps the waistband teasingly against her skin.

Her hands fist into the hair at the nape of his neck and she wrenches him back to her for another searing kiss. After a moment, he pulls back, but only to shift his focus elsewhere. 

Rey moans as he sinks his teeth into the curve of her neck, sucking on the fragile skin with an indelicate slurp that is so erotic she almost comes right then and there. She shifts, grinding against his cock with fervor. 

“You and your tight little skirts,” he mutters, trailing wet kisses down her neck. Rey whines, which earns her a dark, bemused smirk. 

“Stop doing that,” she pants. 

He edges a dark brow into his hairline and resumes kissing her with reverent focus, as though memorizing the surface of her skin with his mouth. His tongue darts out to trace the dip in her clavicle. “Your tight little skirts and your dresses and your dimples. So fucking _cute._ You have no idea what you’ve done to me.”

“I still hate you, you know,” Rey says. She gasps when the tip of his finger drifts a slow path across the wet slit of her labia.

“Do you?” 

And then her phone rings.

Rey jolts, her elbow colliding with the edge of the steering wheel. “Fucking _hell_ ,” she mutters, rubbing the sore joint. She reaches into the cupholder for her phone and frowns at the display. 

“Ignore it,” Ben grunts. He palms at the ridge of his erect cock as though tamping down a flyaway hair.

“It’s Hux,” Rey replies, clamoring back into the passenger seat with all of the grace of a newborn foal. She smoothes the front of her dress down with her palm and sends him a quick text:

_Hi, running a bit late! Feel free to sit down without me._

She clicks send before she can truly contemplate how awful it is to be making out with a man moments before a date with an entirely different one. Then, she slides her phone into her pocket and spends a long moment watching the rain glance against the pavement.

“Well,” she says. “What now?” 

Ben cuts her a gimlet-eyed look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean,” Rey replies, “We just made out in your car.”

“Did we?” He replies sarcastically. As though the phone call had flipped some sort of switch, Ben’s expression has returned to one of cold impassivity, his lips twisted into a cruel little quirk. “That’s news to me.”

“Ben-”

A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Don’t you have a date to get to?” 

“Come off it,”’ Rey snaps. “If you’re jealous, or something-”

“I am not _jealous,_ ” he replies coldly. His inflection implies that it’s the most ridiculous statement he's ever heard, as though she’s asserted that pigs can fly. His eyes flick to her and then back to the parking lot, as brief and sharp as whiplash. “This didn’t mean anything. It can’t, obviously.” 

Rey’s mouth twitches into a scowl. She draws in a fortifying breath and reaches for the door handle. “You are such an asshole,” she hisses, her voice breathy.“I don’t know why I keep expecting anything different.”

“Rey,” Ben sighs. “Wait-”

Cold air whips against Rey’s face when she exits the balmy heat of the car. She stumbles, feeling disoriented, as though she’d been staring for too long into the surface of the sun. Her eyes sting with hot tears as she cuts across the parking lot towards the restaurant. 

“Rey,” Ben calls, his voice sharp and clear even over the howling wind. His hand closes around her wrist. 

She whirls on him, furious. “Don’t _touch_ me.”

He drops his hand and takes a tentative half-step back. “I don’t know why I said that,” Ben says. He pulls a hand through his hair, now mussed and soaked with rain. She tracks the path of a raindrop as it slides down his temple, over the harsh plane of his cheek, down the plump curve of his lip.

“Did you just do this to fuck with me?” Rey spits. “Is this about the job? To — _God_ , to get me off my game, or something?” 

Ben’s expression grows anguished, his lips parted in breathless incredulity. He sputters, and then tries again. “You can’t actually think that-”

“Can’t I? Well, Ben,” she scoffs. “Please, explain to me what I’m supposed to think.” 

Ben falls quiet. He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut again. 

Rey turns her face to the sky, the color of a fresh bruise. She says nothing. Her gaze is narrowed onto the clouds so reverently that it appears, for a moment, as though sees something otherworldly in them. 

By the time she turns back to him, she’s wiped clean, her expression blank. Her eyes scroll over his face in wordless appraisal. “That’s what I thought,”she mumbles. “Don’t follow me.” 

She turns her back to him and leaves.

The next morning, Rey finds herself actually _wishing_ she had a hangover. Perhaps then she’d have no recollection of the atrocious evening prior.

Surprisingly, the date wasn’t entirely terrible. Armitage Hux was faultlessly cordial, if not vaguely dull. He had even pulled her chair out for her and walked her to her car with his hand pressed chivalrously into the small of her back. On top of all of that, he’d endured her arriving fifteen minutes late, soaking wet and fuming. That last fact alone should have earned him first date of the damn century. 

He had also talked enough for the two of them, which she might have thought rude on any other night, but after her fight with Ben, she considered it a blessing. It gave her time to process the infuriating events that had transpired.

Rey awakens long before her alarm goes off, her gaze fixed unseeingly on the ceiling. Her frustration is a warm, itchy weight in her chest, as restless as a living thing. It’s now abundantly clear that Ben will do anything to secure the role — including, apparently, giving her the most mind-blowing make-out session of her life and then claiming, in the same breath, that it meant nothing to him. She wonders if this is some sort of modus operandi for him and curses herself for being too naive to spot it. 

She had accused him of manipulating her in his scheme to secure the editor position, and he hadn’t denied it. That alone was incriminating enough. His stricken expression flits through her memory, his face pale and unreadable, those disastrously competent lips parted in exertion. Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to figure it out so quickly. 

This, she decides, needs to stop. She hasn’t the foggiest idea what _this_ actually is, though she can only assume her utterly idiotic behavior has something to do with the way he gets underneath her skin, infects her judgement like a virus. 

After a few moments of deliberation, Rey decides that she’s too cowardly to face Ben at the office and sends Poe a brief email addled with some nonsense excuse about needing to take a long weekend. His reply is prompt and casual, arriving in her inbox with a cheery _ding_.

_No worries. Rest up — Your application is due Monday :)_

_-P_

“Shit,” Rey sighs. She falls back onto her pillow and piles her covers over her head. _That_ , she decides, is a problem for another day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… we have a kiss! Irrespective of the fact that everything went horribly wrong mere moments after!
> 
> Yeah, so, it’s probably not _technically_ a slow-burn if we’ve already got a kiss in Chapter 4, but I can assure you that we have a lot more fuckery to get through with these two before they can actually make out and not want to throttle each other after. 
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for 100 kudos! I didn’t expect to get half that much, so I’m blown away by the reception. Your support makes me so happy. I’m having a ton of fun with this and might even have another chapter up before the end of the weekend — no promises, though ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She might have thought that having his tongue halfway down her throat would have an effect on their interaction, but as it turns out, he’s just as much of a bloody wanker as he was before.

“You look a bit…” Finn tilts his head, squinting. “Tired.” 

Despite the fact that she’d have rather eaten nails than face Ben that following Monday, Rey musters the courage to haul herself out of bed and make it to work before nine. Finn is already in the kitchen fixing himself a mug of tea when she sweeps in on a quest fueled by pre-caffeine fervor. 

“Need coffee,” Rey mutters. Complex sentences are for nine fifteen or later. 

Finn snorts, sliding a mug of coffee and the creamer dish over the counter. “Seriously, what’s up with you? You look like shit.”

“Thanks, Finn,” Rey replies, her tone saccharine. “That’s such a _lovely_ thing to say.” She tears open a creamer packet with her teeth and dumps it into her coffee. “Is it that bad?” 

“Well, for one thing,” Finn says, “You’re wearing two different shoes.”

Rey glances down in horror and finds that she is, in fact, wearing her two different ballet flats — the one on her left foot printed with stars, the right stripes. “Oh, God,” she groans. “I look like a bloody _American_.”

“Glad to see you’re assimilating. Bit late for Independence Day, though.” 

Rey blinks up at a water stain on the ceiling, blowing a long breath through her teeth. “Alright.” She downs half of her coffee in a scalding gulp, wincing as it very nearly melts the roof of her mouth off. “In the closet.”

“What?”

Her resolute expression is unwavering. “Closet,” Rey says pointedly, gesturing to the storage closet connected to the kitchen lounge. “Now.” She sets her mug on the counter and stalks off without waiting to confirm that he’s following. 

“Have you finally lost your mind?” 

She props the door open with her foot, tilting her head meaningfully towards the entrance. 

“So that’s a _yes,_ then,” Finn grumbles, shouldering his broad frame through the narrow doorframe. The space is cramped and smells of cleaning solution and mothballs. Rey pulls the door shut and blindly fumbles for the string to the light bulb. 

“So,” Rey begins. The light clicks on, illuminating Finn’s flat expression. He watches her quietly, one brow cocked warily into his hairline. 

“So…” Finn says slowly. 

She coughs, shuffling her feet. “I might have kissed Ben.”

“You _what_?” Finn hisses. He rears his head back and whacks it against the edge of a shelf, rattling a dusty mop. He looks comically oversized in the space, like some sort of funhouse illusion. Rey might have laughed if the circumstances weren’t so dire.

“Tell me I misheard you,” he says, palming at the back of his head.

“You didn’t."

“You _hated_ the guy-”

“That hasn’t changed,” she mutters bitterly. Her eyes narrow on a cobweb hovering over their heads. “I still think he’s a wanker.” 

Finn sputters, hopelessly confused. He pulls his hand over his face and peeks as her through the gaps in his fingers. “You hate him,” he begins slowly, “And you kissed him?”

“I don’t know,” Rey hisses, pulling her hand through her hair. “I can’t think straight around him.”

“Oh, you were thinking, alright,” Finn replies dryly, a bemused smirk twitching at his lips. “Just not with your _head_ -”

Rey whacks him on the shoulder and he falls back, snickering. “Alright, alright,” he gasps, tossing his palms up. He falls into a contemplative quiet, rubbing his palm over his jaw. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “The job application is due today. I think he kissed me to mess with me, or something.” 

Finn’s brows draw together. “To distract you, you mean?”

Rey nods.

“Damn,” Finn mutters. “If that is the case, he really is a _wanker._ ”

She snorts. “It sounds weird when you say it. _Wank-ur,_ ” she goads, an exaggerated caricature of his American accent. 

Finn scowls. “So, what now? You’re just going to pretend it never happened?”

Rey pauses, mulling over the question. “I can’t let him think he actually got to me. I need to get on my A-game.” 

“Uh huh,” Finn replies slowly. “Because acting cool around Ben Solo has always come _so easily_ to you.”

She narrows her eyes. “Oh, and who are you, the king of cool? You have eyes. And an attraction to men.”

He shrugs, his mouth pulled into a teasing grin. “At least I can keep my mouth to myself.”

“Ha!” Rey huffs. “At least I don’t have a crush on our _boss_ -”

Finn clamps his hand over Rey’s mouth, muffling her snickering. His eyes are wide with horror. “Shut _up_ ,” he hisses. “I do not have a crush on Poe. You’re just — projecting!” He sputters.

“Projecting?” Rey is now doubled over with laughter, her palms pressed against her kneecaps. “Is that what it is?” 

“I’m done with you,” Finn mutters, wrenching open the door. Rey blinks against the harsh light from the hallway, palming at her tear-dampened cheeks. 

“Oh, done with me, are you-”

She glances up at the precise moment that Finn turns on his heel and walks directly into Ben. 

It’s a black shirt day. Glorious, pitch-dark, velvety black. He looks like the devil incarnate, his dark hair mussed with sleep, thin gray tie ever-so-slightly askew. He’s sporting an uncharacteristic five o’clock shadow on the harsh ridge of his jawline and purplish half-moon shadows under his eyes. He’s never looked so unkempt and the effect is painfully delicious. 

Ben’s gaze flits fitfully between the two of them, coal-dark and flinty. He clears his throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Oh! You weren’t. I mean, it’s not like that,” Finn stutters. He sort of trips into the hallway, hastily lengthening the distance between himself and Rey, as though she’s suddenly gone radioactive, or something. He tosses her a panicked glance over his shoulder. “Um, I’ll see you later, Rey.” 

Rey hovers awkwardly in the threshold of the closet, glaring after Finn’s retreating form. Her mouth pops open in protest, but he’s already pulling the kitchen door shut with a metallic little swish of finality. Bloody coward. 

She spends a few moments enduring the most excruciatingly awkward silence of her life and then makes the mistake of shifting her gaze up at him. His expression is filthy. She’s not sure if it translates to him wanting to fuck her or strangle her, or some combination of the two. She wouldn’t have pegged Ben Solo as being into auto-erotic asphyxiation, but she supposes that stranger things have happened.

“Good morning, Ben.” She aims for cool nonchalance, but her voice cracks pathetically somewhere in the middle. 

When he says nothing, she pushes a gusty sigh through her cheeks and wordlessly shoulders past him. She can feel his eyes on her back, boring a hole between her shoulder blades like a sniper dot. 

“That really wasn’t what it looked like.” 

He hums lowly. “What did it look like?” 

“You know,” she grits, “You don’t really have a right, acting all high and mighty after what you did to me in your car on Friday-”

“What I _did_ to you?” Ben snorts. “If I recall, you were rather _participatory_."

Rey busies herself with refilling her half-empty coffee mug as though it’s the most important task in the world. She might have thought that having his tongue halfway down her throat would have an effect on their interaction, but as it turns out, he’s just as much of a bloody wanker as he was before. “So we’re back to this,” Rey mumbles.

He cocks his hip against the countertop, facing her with his arms crossed over his chest. He has a strange, humorless expression on his face. It’s jarring to see him without all of his usual bravado. “Rey,” he mutters. “About last Friday-”

“Look,” Rey sighs. She spins to face him and then, remembering how fuckable he looks at the present moment, pivots back toward the counter. “Let’s just forget it happened. Call a truce, or whatever.” 

“A truce,” Ben repeats slowly. 

“You said it yourself. It didn’t mean anything.” 

Something like hurt registers in his expression, a subtle little twitch of his mouth. “Rey, I-”

“Our applications are due today. I know that you want the job as badly as I do. It isn’t appropriate for us to be…” She coughs. “ _Fraternizing_ like this.”

Ben huffs, an amused twinkle sparking in his gaze. “Fine. A truce. No _fraternizing_ here.” He tosses his palms up in a show of complacency.

“I mean it, Solo.” Rey glances at him. He’s watching her with his head tilted, as though she’s an amusing little plaything. 

He pauses, assessing her wryly. “What would you call that little closet display, then? Was that fraternizing?” 

Rey steels her jaw. “It wasn’t a display. We were talking.” 

“Talking, huh?” He sucks his teeth. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Even if it was your business, _which it isn’t,_ you don’t exactly have a leg to stand on here.” She tosses her chin in the air and sniffs haughtily. “What are you going to do, report me to HR? I’ll just tell them you accosted me in the Cantina parking lot-”

Rey stops dead in her tracks when, out of the blue, he tosses his head back and laughs. A real laugh, with all of his teeth. She’s never heard it before and it has the effect of electrifying him from within. She stands there with her mouth agape, suddenly unable to look away. 

His laugher trails off and he glances down at her, a wan grin still twitching at his lips. His smile is a little too big for his face and the effect is hopelessly endearing. “What’re you staring at me like that for, scavenger? You’ll catch flies.” 

Rey snaps her mouth shut, blinking. “You laugh like a serial killer,” she says breezily, turning towards the door. Finn’s earlier taunt rings teasingly through her head. 

She really _is_ incapable of acting cool around him. 

Rey has never known a more savage editor than Poe. Not even Ben Solo can compare.

“This line is shit,” he remarks, quite bluntly. His red pen slashes a line through a sentence in her cover letter with a cold sort of conviction. 

Rey sighs, leaning back in her chair opposite her boss’s desk. “Tell me how you really feel,” she grumbles. 

The sun is streaming pleasantly through the bay window of Poe’s office and baking the room in a hazy, cedar-scented musk. She loves spending her afternoons in here — the sun’s position in the sky renders his office hopelessly dreamy, all golden storybook light. She wonders how he gets any work done. It’s such a contrast to the militaristic quiet of her and Ben’s office. 

“You're a brilliant writer. You know that.” He slashes out an adverb with a fluid flick of his wrist.

She winces. “The state of your poor pen might disagree.” 

“Your cover letter is good. Strong, compelling.” Another slash. “It just needs polishing.”

After a few hours of wallowing last Friday morning, Rey had remainder of the weekend slaving over her application materials. By this point, she’s stared at her resume for so long that the text is emblazoned behind her eyelids. She closes her eyes and sees bullet points. “Polishing? Looks like a massacre to me.” 

Poe snorts, running a hand over his curly head as drifts the tip of his pen over a transition sentence. His lips bob with focus as he reads, and then, once he’s finished, he flicks his gaze back up to Rey. “Don’t be such a brat. The interview panel doesn’t know you like I do. You’ve got to make a strong impression.” 

Rey sighs, idly rearranging a crooked stack of Post-Its on his desk. “Are there any other applicants yet?” 

“Ben’s application is already in, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

She makes a noncommittal noise in her throat. “Is that so?” 

Poe slides the revised cover letter back to her and caps his pen. He leans back, propping one leg over another. “He’s good, Rey. I won’t sugarcoat it. But you’ve got to stay focused.”

She nods, drawing her lip between her teeth. 

“Have you given any thought to your presentation?”

Part of the interview process will include a presentation of the applicant’s choosing, with the assignment being, broadly stated, around providing tactical recommendations for the future direction of the company. 

Rey nods. “I have some ideas for getting the backlist into e-book format. Repackaging the whole book, covers, the works.” 

“Brilliant,” Poe murmurs. His eyes are faraway as he considers the concept. “It’s strong. Fresh.” He glances back at Rey. “Do you have everything you need for it?”

“Actually,” Rey murmurs, a plan beginning to take shape in her head, “I think I know just who to ask.”

Rey has just typed out a text to Hux when Ben strides back in from lunch, his jacket slung over his arm. He peers over her shoulder, close enough that she can smell the Altoid he’s crunching on.She doesn’t understand how he can eat those things. She tried one once and it tasted like she had swallowed kerosene. 

She pockets her phone and spins her chair around to face him. “Can I help you?” She asks, her tone snooty. 

“No, thank you.” He places his jacket onto the coat rack and drops into his chair, swaying idly. “I never did ask how your date went.” His words are airy, but his tone is tight. 

“Fine.”

“Wow,” Ben replies sardonically. “What a glowing endorsement.” 

“What are you looking for, a detailed exposé?” She snaps. 

“Such a temper on you,” he murmurs. “I was just making polite conversation.” He’s clicking his pen between his forefinger and thumb in an insipid metronome she knows is intended to annoy her. 

Rey huffs. “Right.” 

“Anyway,” He says, the word drawn-out and syrupy. “I just wanted to make you aware that I’ve proposed a team outing to Phasma. She and Poe have already approved.” 

Rey glances up, her mouth propped open with incredulity. “A what?” She sputters.

“You know, a team outing. Perhaps we’ll all sing Kumbaya and talk about our feelings.”

“But- _why?_ ” She narrows her gaze onto his face, trying to assess his angle. _Ben Solo_ and _team player_ are not two phrases that belong in the same sentence. 

“It’s been six months since the merger. I’m just trying to encourage mingling.” 

“You are such a brown-nose,” Rey hisses. “You just did this to get the leg-up for the promotion.” 

Ben’s smirk comes slowly, like a developing sunrise. His dark eyes roam her face. She can tell that her irritation pleases him. “You seem to think that I do everything with the express purpose of annoying you.”

“Because you _do._ ” Rey drums her fingertips against her desk contemplatively. “Fine. I’ll co-sign the idea to show my commitment,” she says woodenly. 

“Fantastic.”

“So, where will we be going? A cabin retreat in the woods? I’d be happy to bring supplies for the macaroni necklaces.” 

He hums absently, typing something on his computer. “Fencing, actually.” 

Rey stills. She peers at his expression for signs of deception and finds none. 

“ _Fencing_?”

“Have you heard of it, or would you like a description?”

“I’ve obviously heard of it, you _git_. I just wasn’t expecting such a brutish team building exercise.” 

He glances at her over his computer monitor, a dark little quirk in his brow. “Thought you could use an outlet to work off all of that _energy_ you’ve got _,_ Hutton.” His gaze is alight with the memory of last week. 

Rey's cheeks heat at the innuendo. “HR,” she spits. “If this is some kind of scheme, it’s not going to work. I’ll fake nice in front of Poe and Phasma if I have to.” Her mouth sours at the mere thought. 

“Great,” he sneers. “I’m so glad to have you onboard.” 

Rey presses her lips together, seething. The more she considers it, the more appealing the idea of stabbing Ben Solo with a pointy stick sounds. 

“Not as glad as I am,” she mutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, fencing is going to go absolutely swimmingly and nothing will go wrong. 
> 
> Ha. 
> 
> So grateful for all of the love this silly little story has gotten. Please know that all of your lovely comments and kudos encourage me to keep going. Thank you!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Impossibly, he’s gotten the last word in yet again. She wonders if he holds a degree in emotional warfare as well as journalism.

Nothing can prepare Rey for the sight of Ben Solo in a Hanes t-shirt. 

There’s nothing inherently special about it. It’s black and, judging by a tiny hole in the hem, well-worn. Most notably, however, is the fact that it happens to be clinging to his chest for dear life. 

It’s Friday, the day of the fencing excursion. Everyone has assembled in the parking lot in front of the building, waiting with bated breath to be bussed off to go brutalize one another with metal swords. Rey excuses herself from her conversation with Finn and Rose to stand beside Ben, who is evidently too busy scrawling something on a clipboard to comment on her arrival.

“You’re wearing a t-shirt,” Rey says. She tilts her head, flicking her gaze up and down his figure. His ass looks criminally good in the worn, paint-flecked jeans he’s wearing.

Ben glances up from his paper. Blinking, he briefly appraises her outfit — a ratty Pink Floyd t-shirt and a pair of leggings she’s had since college — and then he clears his throat, turning back to his clipboard.

“Did you expect me to go fencing in Hugo Boss?”

“Hugo Boss, huh?” Rey presses the tip of her index finger to her chin. “Didn’t they design the Nazi uniforms?”

Ben looks down, pinching the bridge of his nose. His mouth twitches and she can't tell if he’s trying to avoid laughing or strangling her. 

Rey stands on her tip-toes and peers over his shoulder at the sheet of paper. ‘“What’s this?”

“The teams for today.”

Rey scowls, her brow furrowed. “You put me on your team for every round.”

“And?”

“ _And,_ ” she says pointedly, “I was operating under the assumption I’d get to poke you with a stick at some point.” 

“A shame,” Ben mutters. He turns to the loose semicircle that’s assembled, their coworkers watching Ben with expressions ranging from trepidation to open disdain. They look just about as pleased to be going on this team excursion than Rey is about being forced to co-run it. 

“Alright,” Ben barks. “Listen up.”

He’s unsmiling, spine ramrod-straight, like he’s a military commander and not a glorified field trip chaperone. Rey twitches her fingers in a wave and a few people perk up, smiling, until Ben glances down the barrel of his nose and fixes her with a haughty glare.

“I’m just being _friendly_ ,” she hisses.

“You are to form two lines,” Ben continues, his tone sharp. “Rey will collect your money, I’ll collect your waiver. After that, you can board the bus. Any questions?”

A few hands raise but Ben just turns on his heel, ignoring them. “Great. The line starts here.” 

The crowd surges forward at once and Rey stumbles back and directly into Ben’s soft, t-shirt clad chest. 

“Seriously?” Ben spits, throwing his arm out in front of her. “I told you all to _make a line_ , not trample her.” He shoves them all back, scowling. 

There are a few muttered apologies. Rey swallows, disentangling herself from the cage of his warm forearm. “Thanks,” she mumbles to Ben. A more orderly line forms after that and they spend the next few minutes collecting the cash and waivers in silence. 

Finn eventually makes it to the front of the line, clad in track pants and a Run DMC shirt with bleach stains around the collar. Her gaze catches on them and she grins. Rey had tried to lighten his hair once and the results were predictably disastrous. 

“You’re going to be on our team, right, Peanut?” Finn asks, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.

Ben glances over, his jaw taut. “Teams are pre-allocated.”

“According to _him_ ,” Rey stage-whispers behind her palm. 

Finn, good-natured as ever, merely shrugs. “I’ll save you a seat on the bus?”

“Waiver,” Ben snaps, holding his hand out, palm up. Finn glances at Rey, a question in his cocked brow, and she merely shrugs.

Rey watches him leave and then turns to Ben, frowning. “What was that about?” 

“Nothing,” Ben mutters, turning to board the bus. 

She trails after him and peers down the aisle, finding, to her dismay, that the only unoccupied seat is the one next to him. Rey tosses Rose and Finn a pouting look and turns back to Ben.

“Are you planning on sitting, scavenger?”

Rey drops into the seat, grumbling. She can feel the heat radiating off of his body, the curve of his bicep barely brushing against her shoulder. She turns and finds that his eyes are fixed directly onto her. This close, she observes that they’re not actually brown but a murky hazel, with flecks of green closer to the pupil. 

“What?” She breathes.

He shakes his head clearingly, turning back to his clipboard. “Nothing.”

“Let me see that.” Rey leans over and snatches the clipboard, tracing her thumb down the line of names until she finds hers. She erases her name and swaps it with Jessika’s, the bubbly receptionist. 

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing it.”

“Fixing it how, exactly?”

“I’m putting us on different teams.” She scrawls her name in and hands the clipboard back to Ben with a haughty flourish. 

Ben tilts his head, his eyes narrowed. “You do realize that fencing swords don’t actually cause bodily harm, right?” 

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Rey replies. “What, are you afraid of losing?”

His voice drops to a murmur. “I’m not going to lose.” 

“Is that so?”

He hums low in his throat. “I don’t lose.” His eyes fall to her lips and she wets them, swallowing thickly. 

For the remainder of the journey, they lapse into a silence that is somehow neither awkward nor companionable. Every few minutes, Rey twists in her seat and mouths Finn and Rose some despairing cry for help. For dramatic effect, of course.

When they pull into the parking lot of the fencing club, Ben stands and turns to face the crowd in stony silence until the idle chatter slows to a halt.  
“There will be twelve rounds, two opponents per round. I’ve divided you all into teams,” he explains, his voice a slow, commanding rumble. “I’d recommend you pay attention to the instructor. Unless, of course, you _want_ to get hurt.” 

When no one reacts to that, Ben continues, crossing his arms over his ridiculously-toned chest. “I’ve mixed up the teams with the aim being to get to know your colleagues in an active environment. The first team to score a point wins that round.” 

Someone raises their hand and Ben nods at them. 

“How do you score a point?”

Ben sighs gustily. “Have none of you fenced before?”

The crowd blinks up at Ben blankly. 

“Just pay attention to the demonstration,” he grumbles wearily. 

“And now, for the best part!” Rey interjects, kneeling up on her seat. She offers them a dimpled smile. “The grand prize.” Everyone perks up at that, fixing their attention on her. “The team with the most points at the end will each earn a paid day off.”

Everyone devolves into excited chatter as they file off the bus and march towards the recreation center, a squat, dome-shaped structure situated in the middle of an otherwise desolate clearing. There’s nothing quite like a “Get out of jail free” card to motivate a group of adults.

Poe appears at Rey’s side and claps his arm on her shoulder. “Go easy on ‘em, killer,” he teases, nudging her. 

“What about you?” Rey asks. She glances around and lowers her voice to a murmur. “I know you’d like to go toe-to-toe with a certain blonde-haired someone.”

He snorts. “No way. I know how to pick my battles, kid.” 

“I’ll put on a good show, then,” Rey replies cheekily. 

They form a lumpy circle in the lobby, which has towering, high-beamed ceilings and smells of old wood and citrus cleaner. The furniture is plastic and dated-looking, all contrasty neon colors that Rey imagines haven’t been updated since the mid-80’s.

A young Black woman with round spectacles breezes through the archway, her sword balanced neatly in the cook of her arm.

“My name is May Kanata,” she announces. She has an innately commanding presence that compels the room’s undivided attention without her even having to ask. “I’ll be your instructor today. Mostly, I’m here to make sure you all make it out of here in one piece.”

There’s scattered, weak laughter and a few nervous glances. May walks them through the tedious motions of putting on their uniforms, how to properly hold the sword, ways to score points, ways to foul. Rey half-listens, fantasizing about the moment she’ll finally be able to knock Ben Solo down a peg. Preferably, hard enough that he falls on his ass. Sure, she’s never _actually_ fenced before, but she imagines she’ll pick the sport up quickly. 

“Alright,” May says, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get two volunteers up here for a demonstration.” 

A hush falls over the room. Rey cowers, avoiding May’s eyes as they flick appraisingly over the crowd, one hand planted flat on her cocked hip. “Unless,” she adds, “You’d like me to pick for you.” 

Rose tosses up her hand. “Rey and I will go first,” she declares. A few dozen heads swivel in their direction.

Rey coughs, stumbling as Rose nudges her forward with a firm shove between her shoulder blades. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Excellent!” May replies. She beckons them with a wave of her arm, beaming. “Everyone give a hand to our brave volunteers!”

Her colleagues break into a polite applause. Rey, horrified, spins and finds Ben’s dark head over the crowd, an amused gleam alight in his gaze. He lifts one shoulder in a challenging shrug. 

Rey heaves a long-suffering sigh, dragging her feet against the mat in a death march towards the front of the room. They spend a few moments adjusting their uniforms under May’s guidance. Rey’s helmet is a little too big and it makes her feel like a child wearing costume jewelry. She peers through the mesh mask and finds that Ben is watching her with a a Cheshire Cat grin, leaning casually against a pillar with his arms crossed over his chest.

“This will be a foil competition, meaning that your target is your opponent’s torso.” May hands Rey her sword and she spends a moment flicking it back and forth through the air with more bravado than strictly necessary. “The first to score a touch will win the practice round.” 

“You’re going down for this, Tico,” Rey mutters, squaring her shoulders.

“In your dreams,” Rose sneers. 

May raises a whistle to her lips and blows. “En garde!” 

They pace to the center of the mat until they face each other, a few feet’s width between them. Rey raises her blade in a defensive position that looked far more competent when May had done it. 

Rose snorts. “You look like an id-”

She’s cut off by another shrill whistle. Both women wince as May cups her palms around her mouth and bellows their cue to begin. 

Rose lurches forward and Rey stumbles back, skidding on her heels. She narrowly parries Rose’s swipe with a block of her own and the foils collide with a metallic twang. 

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Rey goads, steadying herself. The two spend a moment assessing one another wryly, and then Rey is the one to advance this time, lunging forward with a stab.Rose pivots back on the balls of her feet, blocking her. 

They’re well-matched, and, after a few moments getting their bearings, both navigate the floor with increased confidence. Their movements become tactical, a contrast to their earlier foolhardy confidence. 

The back of Rey’s neck has become slick with sweat. She pulls in a fortifying breath, her gaze drifting over the crowd until it collide's with Ben’s. His expression is strangely humorless, something like admiration in his features. She’s so captured by this strange development that she doesn’t notice Rose has advanced until the tip of her weapon is pressed against Rey’s padded chest.

“ _You_ ,” Rey spits, stumbling. “You cheated!”

Rose tosses her head back in a laugh. She leans forward, her voice lowered to a conspiratorial murmur. “It’s not _my_ fault you were too busy checking out-”

“Excellent work, you two!” May calls, leading another smattering of applause. Rey pulls off her helmet, lifting her hair off of her dampened neck. 

“Not bad, scavenger.” 

She spins to find that Ben has pushed to the front of the crowd. He watches her with his head tilted charmingly.

“Don’t do that,” Rey grumbles, stalking off the mat. May calls the next two names from Ben’s list — Finn, and a guy from the accounting department that had come over in the merge from First Order.

“Do what, exactly? Compliment you?” 

Rey opens her mouth to reply just as Finn breezes by on his way to the mat, clapping her on the shoulder. “Way to go, Peanut!” He calls over his shoulder.

Ben’s eyes narrow onto his retreating form, then flick back to Rey. “ _Peanut_?” His voice has taken on a cruel little lilt. “I didn’t realize you were one for pet names.”

Rey knows that it isn’t her place to out Finn’s sexuality, not that he explicitly hides it from anyone. But that doesn’t mean that she’s not tempted to tell him anyway. He’d have egg on his face and absolutely no rebuttal. 

Rey glances around and finds that the crowd is too focused on the match to pay them any mind. “You _are_ jealous,” she whispers. “I knew that what you said in the car last week was such bollocks _-_ ”

“Jealous?” He quirks a brow into his hairline. His pupils have blown wide and the effect renders his gaze darker, a little hungry. He dips his head so that they’re nearly eye-level. “Of him? Is that what you think?”

“How else would you describe it?” Rey bites back. 

“It isn’t jealousy.” He drags his tongue across the wide plane of his lower lip. Rey tracks the motion like a dog with a bone. “For one simple reason.” 

Rey draws in a shaky breath. “What reason might that be?”

Ben’s gaze is very nearly black now. “The reason,” he murmurs, “Is that there’s no competition.” 

He steps back, then, leaving Rey staring dumbly after him as he melts back into the crowd without a backwards glance. 

Rey clenches her fist hard enough that her nails carve little half-moon divots into the flesh of her palm. Impossibly, he’s gotten the last word in yet again. She wonders if he holds a degree in emotional warfare as well as journalism. 

She spends the next hour seething, only partially paying attention to the matches that follow until May finally makes the call she’s been waiting for. 

“Next up,” she calls, peering at the clipboard. “Are Rey Hutton and Ben Solo.” 

An amused murmur ripples through the air. Their rivalry is well-known, and, if the sheer number of HR reports that both have filed against the other is any indication, well-documented. She swallows, suddenly rethinking her idea to put them on opposite teams. 

“Problem, Rey?” Ben asks, passing her on his way to collect his weapon. He pulls it out of the case in a cocksure motion. 

“Of course not,” Rey manages. He somehow manages to look sexy in his fencing uniform, which seems like a logical fallacy, being that she can hardly see his face.

Rey turns to May, pointing to a lower shelf on the wall mount. “What are these ones called?” 

“That’s used in sabre fencing. It’s a more aggressive style.” May pulls out one of the saber swords and twists it between her palm, showing Rey the curved grip. “Want to try it?” 

“Sure,” Rey replies eagerly. 

“Sabers are more difficult to use,” Ben interjects, frowning. “Are you sure-”

“Of course I’m sure,” she replies. She tosses Ben a sideways glance. “Why does yours have a crossguard?”

Ben rolls his eyes. “Because I’m cooler,” he replies factually. 

Rey takes the sword from May’s hand with a haughty huff.

“Your target zone is the upper body, excluding the hands,” May explains, stepping back. She looks a little wary, her gaze drifting speculatively between them. They take their positions in the center of the floor.

“I can tell you’re smirking behind that thing,” Rey accuses. “You won’t after I win.”

“I only ask that you spare my face,” Ben says. “It’s my best feature.”

“Perhaps when you’re not speaking.”

“Oh? So you do enjoy my face, then?”

Rey falters. She walked right into that one. “No,” she replies ineffectually. He’s already won and it infuriates her even more. Her fingers flex around the hilt of her blade. 

May blows her whistle. “En garde!”

“Is that so?”

“Quite. Your nose is rather large, actually.”

“I’ve been told the effect is charming. Some might even call it rugged.”

“Well,” she sputters, “I wouldn’t.”

May shouts their cue to begin and Rey trips forward and then overcorrects, nearly losing her footing when Ben easily parries her blow with a flick of his wrist. “You’re such a shit liar, Hutton.”

Rey takes a defensive step back, assessing his form for a sign of weakness that doesn’t appear to exist. He swings his sword boredly. 

“Are you going to keep making me come to you?” Rey snaps. 

“As long as you’ll keep doing it. It’s much more effective to play defensively.” She swipes and he blocks it again, the edge of her blade colliding with his. “You’re not going to get anywhere running into me like that.”

Rey presses her tongue into her cheek. This time, she aims lower in a bid to catch him off guard, but he anticipates the move and lurches forward with a stab that narrowly misses her torso. “You’re also not going to get anywhere running your mouth.”

“Oh! Ben Solo, come to preach to _me_ about running my mouth?” 

Rey is vaguely aware that their little tiff has garnered a captive audience. She catches Poe’s glance in the throng, his brow furrowed warily. 

“I’m not preaching. I’m merely stating a fact.” He lunges and Rey raises her arm in a defensive swipe. She pushes her weight against him and sends him stumbling back, opening up a brief window for her to strike.

“It’s not a fact because you _say_ it is.” Rey leaps forward and sort of waves her sword around vaguely. She’s frustrated now and her anger is making her sloppy.

“Hey,” Ben says. His tone is a little softer. “Relax, alright? I’m just teasing you.” He blocks another swipe as easily as though he’s clearing a cobweb. 

Rey is now properly seeing red. “And how are you so bloody —” Another strike, another parry. “ _Good_ at everything?” 

With a low grunt, she leaps forward again. This time, Ben raises his arm in a defensive motion and the force pushes his mask back just enough that she can see the shape of his full lips. He’s breathing in shallow little puffs, his cheeks ruddied with exertion. “Rey-”

Rey swipes the edge of her blade up against the front of his mask so hard that it splinters, knocking his helmet off in the process. There’s a metallic clatter as the shattered fragment falls to the floor. 

She watches, horrified, as she pulls the ragged edge of the remaining part of weapon back and finds that the tip is leaking blood onto the athletic mat. The room is silent, save for the steady drip, as even as a metronome. Rey pulls in a panicked gasp and tosses her own helmet to the floor.

“I’m fine,” he grumbles, stumbling back. His hand is pressed to the side of his face in a manner that communicates that he is decidedly not fine. 

“Ben, let me see-”

“It’s _fine_ ,” he snaps. 

“I can see you bleeding through your fingers, you stubborn idiot. Let me see.”

“It’s just a scrape.”

Rey rushes forward and pulls at Ben’s hand until he reluctantly lowers it. Her stomach drops at the sight. She’s left a gnarled gash like a lightning strike down the right side of his face, extending from just above his eyebrow to the harsh curve of his jaw. Distantly, she hears someone scream. 

Ben stares at the pads of his stained fingers in quiet reverence. His eyes lock with Rey’s and, for the first time, she sees genuine fear in them. 

“Shit,” they mutter in unison. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Long-suffering author sigh*
> 
> The idiocy. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Despite the fact that I watched many fencing videos on 0.75x speed (It’s a very fast sport, as it turns out) to get a grasp of the general mechanics, I’m playing very fast and loose with the terminology. If you’re a fencer and I got something wrong … keep it to yourself. LOL.
> 
> I wanted to rework my own version of the fight scene in Force Awakens with some light saber-adjacent action. I found out that there’s a fencing sword called a saber/sabre and the rest was, as they say, history.
> 
> As it turns out, fencing injuries are very uncommon — they only really occur when a blade breaks. The sheer force of Rey’s rage is responsible for this. 
> 
> Very pleased to report, however, that we will get some H/C action in the following updates ;) If you’re liking this, drop me a note! I read them all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma’s expression is about as skeptical as one might expect after being asked to trust a person who just accidentally hacked her coworker's face in half.

Rey’s sneakers squeak against the linoleum tiles as she paces the University of Washington Medical Center’s waiting room. There’s a telenovela playing on the grainy little mounted television and everything smells like antiseptic and burnt coffee. 

“It was just _weird._ It was weird, right?” 

Finn and Rey are discussing the last thing Ben had said to her before he was loaded into the back of the ambulance. More specifically, Rey is talking and Finn is listening.

“Remind me what it was, again?” Finn asks. He’s drumming his fingertips against his bouncing knee and his eyes keep flicking up to the swinging set of doors leading into the emergency room. Rey was insistent on following Ben to the hospital and Finn didn't want her to be alone while she waited for updates on his condition. Rose had offered to come along as well, but Rey had already felt bad enough about ruining one of her friend’s Friday evenings and insisted she left for the camping trip she’d been planning for weeks. 

“He said, ‘Don’t let them call my emergency contact.’” 

Ben’s wounded face was awash in the blinking light of the ambulance, half-obscured by a soiled wad of gauze. When Rey asked why, his response was drowned out by the clamor from the EMTs as they loaded the stretcher onto the vehicle, shouting out medical terminology Rey couldn’t begin to understand even despite binging all seventeen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy.

“What do you think it means?” 

Finn blows a gusty sigh through his cheeks. “I have no idea, Peanut.”

She recalls the spartan state of his desk, how she’d been taken aback by his lack of mementos on the first day they’d met. “Maybe he’s leading a double life.”

He fixes her with a flat look. “ _Maybe_ you’ve been watching too much of this telenovela,” he says, gesturing at the television. 

The double doors swing open and in walk Phasma and Poe, each wearing expressions of irritation and weariness, respectively. Phasma’s cold gaze narrows on Rey and she swallows. 

Finn clamors up from his seat, his expression alert. “Any news?”

“They’re working on him,” Poe says, pulling a hand through his tousled hair. “They wouldn’t let us in the room, though. He’ll need stitches.”

“ _Fourteen_ stitches,” Phasma says pointedly. Her attention on Rey is unwavering. 

Rey swallows a mouthful of hot bile and shifts her gaze to the floor. The rubber tip of her sneaker has a drop of dried blood on it. 

“Do they know how much longer it’ll be?” 

“About an hour, I think,” Poe replies. “Listen, Rey, it was just an accident-”

“You should all go home,” Rey interjects sharply. “I’ll wait here with him.” Her glance drifts between the three of them fitfully, unsure where to settle. Poe is watching her quietly, his mouth pinched into a grimace. She’s known him long enough to be able to tell that he’s internally debating something, his head tilted to the left, slightly, brows drawn in. 

“We should call someone to meet him here,” Phasma says. “They must have a number on file-”

Rey’s panicked gaze locks with Finn’s. They share a silent exchange, and then, reluctantly, she turns back to Phasma. In the hours that have passed since the accident, she looks unchanged, her appearance just as meticulously coiffed as it had been that morning. Her vulpine features catch the buzzing fluorescent lighting like cut glass. Rey, on the other hand, suspects that she’s begun to resemble the Outbreak monkey. 

“That won’t be necessary.” 

A silvery brow edges into her hairline. “What?” 

“Um.” Rey draws the word out, waffling. “He doesn’t have family nearby.” 

“How do you know that?”

“He told me.” 

“Did he?” Her tone has taken on a sharp, suspicious edge. 

They hold each other’s gaze. It feels a bit like a Western shootout. “Yes,” Rey ventures carefully. “They’re all the way in Spokane. Would hate to make them make the trek at this time of night.” 

She makes a vague humming noise. Rey glances at Poe to confirm its meaning and he offers a subtle, unhelpful shrug. 

Rey clears her throat. “Trust me. I can take it from here.” 

Phasma’s expression is about as skeptical as one might expect after being asked to trust a person who just accidentally hacked her coworker's face in half. 

“It’s the least I can do,” Rey adds.

“It is,” Phasma agrees dryly. “Very well, then. If that’s what Ben prefers.” 

Rey glances back at Finn and breathes an inward sigh of relief. “It is,” she squeaks. 

“You sure you’re going to be okay here?” Poe asks. He drops a hand onto her shoulder and kneads it reassuringly. 

Rey shakes her head, patting his hand. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.” She hitches her thumb at the television. “I have María and Eduardo to keep me company.” 

They spend a few minutes discussing the logistics; Rey will get herself and Ben an Uber back to work, where they’ll then be able to pick up their cars. After a few more minutes of restless puttering on Poe’s part, he and Phasma reluctantly leave. Finn lingers in the threshold of the lobby, his hands buried in his pockets.

He keeps cutting Rey wary glances and she eventually whirls on him, her tongue stuck out in a half-hearted attempt at levity. 

“Stop worrying so much,” Rey says.

He tilts his head. His brown gaze is warm with concern. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Rey.”

She sighs, shuffling her feet restlessly. “I just feel so stupid. I can’t believe I lost my temper like that.” 

Finn makes a noncommittal noise. “To be fair, he _was_ sort of asking for it.”

Rey narrows her eyes and he tosses his palms up, grinning wanly. “Sure, you shouldn’t have gone off like that. But he’s just as responsible for mending whatever…” He pauses, waving his wrist vaguely. “ _Tension_ you two have got going on.”

She groans, pulling her palm over her eyes. “This is horrible, Finn. What am I supposed to say to him?”

“‘Sorry for stabbing your face,’ might be a start.”

Rey whacks his shoulder. “Go home, you tosser,” she huffs, but she’s smiling. “I’ll see you on Monday.” 

They say their goodbyes and Rey returns to pacing and half-watching the telenovela. She’s just gotten to the part where María learns that Eduardo’s parasailing accident left him with amnesia when a mousy nurse wearing Garfield scrubs breezes through the double doors. She looks down at a clipboard, then back up at Rey. 

“Are you with Ben Solo?” 

Rey nods, practically tripping forward to greet her. “How is he?” 

The nurse beckons her to a deserted hallway to the left of the waiting room and gestures for Rey to take a seat in one of the plastic chairs. She sinks into it, her stomach knotted with dread. 

When Rey speaks, her voice is small and breathy. “Is Ben going to be okay?” 

The nurse’s slender face wrinkles with concern. “Well, that’s why I came out here to talk to you.” She tilts her head and a dishwater blonde curl spills out of her loose chignon. “Are you his girlfriend?”

Rey sputters, her cheeks heating. “I- Um. No. We’re colleagues.”

“Oh.” She cocks one brow into her hairline but presumably decides not to press further. “Ben will be fine, but he may need a bit of help for the first few days of his recovery.”

Rey frowns. “What do you mean?”

“His laceration is severe enough that we’ve given him five milligrams of Oxycontin to alleviate his pain.” She holds up an orange prescription bottle and jiggles it meaningfully. 

Rey stares blankly until she clarifies. “Common side effects can include confusion and disorientation. Given that it’s a controlled substance, he probably shouldn’t be left alone this weekend.” 

Rey blinks. “Oh.” 

“Do you know if he has family nearby? A friend he can call?” 

Rey sighs, leaning her head back against the wall. Her eyes drift shut in some combination of fatigue and disbelief. “Not that I know of.” 

“I see,” the nurse murmurs awkwardly. There’s a brief lapse into silence save for the rhythmic beeping of nearby machines, and then she stands, dusting off her wrinkled scrubs. “He should be ready to be discharged shortly. Do you want to see him?”

Perhaps noticing Rey’s hesitant expression, she offers her a tentative smile. “It’s not so bad, honey. If you’re squeamish, I mean-”

“Oh,” Rey interjects, shaking her head. She brings her palm up to the back of her neck and kneads it awkwardly. “I’m not.” 

The nurse leads her down an adjoining hallway and stops at a door that’s already partially ajar. It’s adorned with all sorts of gross-looking medical diagrams and illustrations. She raps her knuckles against the doorframe and then turns to Rey. “I’ll leave you two to chat while I fill out his discharge papers.”

Rey’s eyes widen imperceptibly as the woman takes off in a brisk clip down the hall. “But-”

She tosses her a thumbs up over her shoulder. “I’ll be right back!” 

Reluctantly, Rey turns back to the door. She hovers her hand over the doorknob and draws in a fortifying breath when, suddenly, she hears Ben’s voice. His tone is different than one he's ever used around her before, softened with uncertainty. 

“Rey?”

She ventures into the dimmed room and finds him sitting with his long legs hanging over the side of the cot, gaunt and pale against the starchy sheets. He turns his face to her and she bites back a gasp at the garish sight of his puckered wound, his stitches stark against the angry pink flesh. 

“Hey,” Rey sighs. She perches delicately in the armchair across from the cot. He’s looking at her with a strange, unreadable expression, as though she’s just told him something puzzling. His eyes are cloudy and hooded.

Ben blinks sleepily. “Hey.” 

She plants her knees on her elbows and leans forward, frowning. “I’m so sorry, Ben.” Her voice is a raspy, panicked croak. “I didn’t mean to-"

“It’s okay,” Ben interjects, yawning. “I feel great.” 

Rey’s mouth twitches into a grin. “Is that so?” 

“This Oxycontin stuff is pretty neat,” he replies, making an O with his forefinger and thumb.

“I’ll bet. You’re high as a kite.” 

Realistically, she knows that Ben’s present affability is a result of the drugs, but when fixes his full attention on her and smiles boyishly, it warms her chest with some emotion she knows she has no right to lay claim to. 

“Am I?” He tilts his head. “That’s fun.” 

“For one of us, at least,” Rey murmurs. She glances at the wall clock and finds that hours have passed since he was admitted. “They're letting you break out of here soon.”

His mouth folds into a worried frown. “Oh.” 

Rey wishes she could brush the pad of her thumb over his mouth and watch it melt back into that easy smile. She folds her fingers in her lap, as though to restrain herself. “What’s wrong?” 

He shakes his head, nudging some of his mussed hair over his forehead. “Nothing. When can I go?” 

“The nurse said she’s filling out your discharge papers. We can leave after that.” 

Ben makes a vague noise of acknowledgement and nods. 

“Can I ask you something?” She asks hesitantly. 

“Yes.” 

“Why didn’t you want them to call your emergency contact?” 

Ben blinks slowly, then shifts his gaze down to the speckled floor. “Can I have a different question?” He mumbles.

Rey snorts. “This isn’t Truth or Dare, Ben.” 

Ben runs his hand over his jaw and shifts uneasily on the cot. “It’s … complicated.” 

“Is there anyone that can stay with you this weekend? A friend?”

“I don’t have friends,” Ben replies factually. His lips twitch into a scowl. “Because I’m an asshole.”

Rey spends a moment watching him. She could say the obvious thing, _I’m your friend,_ but they both know that it isn’t true, and so they settle on silence. 

He turns his soft, murky gaze back to her. “I’m sorry.” His voice is soft and earnest.

She finds that she’s leaned in close enough that her nose nearly brushes his jaw. She could turn her head and her lips would meet the harsh plane of his cheekbone. “Why are you sorry?”

The door swings open and they lurch apart like teenagers caught kissing in the schoolyard. The nurse stands in the threshold of the room, her fist poised in place against the door. Her lips are puckered into speculative pout. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” she chirps. 

“You weren’t,” Rey mutters, folding her arms over her chest self-consciously. 

“Well, Ben,” The nurse says cheekily, flipping through his discharge papers. “I think you’ve been through enough today. You’re free to go.” She turns to Rey and hands her a small white paper bag. “This is his medication. No driving, no heavy physical activity. He’ll need to take this with food and water every five to six hours as needed.” 

Rey nods, giving the bag an experimental jiggle. 

"Have you, er…” Her eyes flick awkwardly to Ben, and then back to Rey. “Decided on an arrangement?” 

“I’ll stay with him for the weekend,” Rey supplies quickly. She bites her lip and turns to Ben, who’s still sitting on the cot, his attention drifting slowly between them. “I mean, if that’s alright-”

“Yes,” Ben cuts in. He looks alert as he says it, his expression watchful. “I’d like that.”

“Okay,” Rey replies softly, smiling. She could get used to this Ben. 

Ben is half-asleep in the Falcon, the side of his cheek pressed against the cold window. His long legs are scrunched up against the dashboard, his big hands folded neatly over his abdomen. Every few minutes, she’ll lean over and jostle his shoulder to ask him which way to go and he’ll toss her a sleepy-eyed look that is so hapless and endearing that she nearly forgets to keep her eyes on the road. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks, flicking on her blinker. She notices that he’s directed her to one of the posher areas of the city.

“ _Goood,”_ Ben slurs. 

“That’s _goood,”_ Rey replies, her tone gently mocking. “Is this one yours?” She peers over the steering wheel at the glassy apartment building and whistles. The chrome finish catches the dusky light in sleek geometric shapes. She squints at the sign positioned at the front of the attached parking garage. “You have a _valet_?”

Ben stirs and scrubs the sleep out of his eyes. “I made a lot of money at my old job,” he mumbles, somewhat guiltily. “Didn’t spend a lot of it.” 

Rey steps out onto the curb and hands her keys to the waiting valet with an incredulous little huff. “Um. Thanks,” she says. 

“My pleasure,” The young man replies, nodding politely at Rey. His eyes flick to Ben and his mouth drops open, then snaps shut just as promptly. Wisely, he takes off in the puttering Falcon without another word. 

“This way,” Ben mumbles. He leans his weight against her as they enter the elevator. He’s warm and smells of spicy soap and his head keeps lolling toward the floor with fatigue. “Can you hit the button for ten? It won't stop spinning.”

She loops his arm through his unthinkingly and punches the button with her pinkie. They’re flanked by walls of mirrors, surrounded on all sides by infinite versions of themselves. “Don’t pass out on me,” she teases, nudging his ribs with her elbow. “You’re too heavy for me to carry.” 

He huffs a laugh and it worries a little dimple into his cheek. Jesus. _Dimples._

When the elevator drifts to a stop, he leads them to a door at the end of the hall and fishes his keys out of his pocket. Rey plucks them from his grip. They’re far more practical than her pink fuzzy dice keychain. 

She turns to Ben with a joke poised on the tip of her tongue, and then she pushes open the door and loses her train of thought completely. 

The apartment is spartan, sure, not unlike the state of his desk. It’s stunning and curated, as though he plucked it directly out of an interior design magazine. Clean, impersonal, shiny. Granite countertops and dark stained-wood floors that are so clean Rey can practically see her reflection in them. He’s even got one of those chrome refrigerators. Rey’s is white and covered with magnets of cartoon characters and postcards. 

“Damn,” Rey mutters. Ben is already halfway across the room. He tosses himself onto the leather sectional and rolls over, the jutting plane of his shoulder rising and falling with his steady breath, backlit austerely against the setting sun. He mumbles something incomprehensible and then is asleep, snoring softly into the crook of his bent arm. His phone is still clasped lightly in his fist.

Rey quietly pads across the room and squats in front of him. He looks youthful and unbothered, his lips parted slightly, eyelids twitching restlessly. 

“Ben,” she murmurs, poking him with her index finger. “Your phone.” 

Ben grunts noncommittally, turning his face further into his arm. Gently, Rey pries his fingers loose from his phone and stands, inspecting this lock screen. She notices that he has a dozen missed calls in the time since they’ve been at the hospital. 

Rey quietly opens the sliding door to his balcony and shuts it behind her, scrolling through the missed calls. She recognizes the Washington area code, though Ben hasn’t programmed the number into his phone. 

She jumps when his phone starts vibrating once more, illuminating the screen with the same number that had evidently been trying to reach him. She clicks the accept button before she can think better of it. 

“Hello?”

There’s a brief pause on the other end, as though the caller hadn't expected Rey to answer. “So this number _does_ work, then,” a man eventually responds. There’s something in his dry, lazy cadence that sounds immediately familiar to Rey, though she isn’t sure why. 

Rey pulls the phone away from her ear, peers at the screen, and then returns it. “I’m sorry,” she says slowly. “Who is this?”

There’s a muffled conversation on the other end, and then some shuffling. Distantly, Rey can hear a woman say something, but she’s too far away from the phone for Rey to place the words. Eventually, the man returns with an uncertain cough. 

“This is Han Solo,” comes the gruff reply. “Who the hell is this?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fast update because I could not wait to give you guys some loopy Ben. THE SOFTNESS OF IT ALL. 😭
> 
> I promised you people H/C, and I will deliver.
> 
> If you're liking this, consider leaving me a note or a Kudos? They make my day.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She might have fantasized privately about his bedroom on more than one occasion, but said fantasies also tended to include him cognizant.

For a moment, Rey is so stunnedthat she can’t speak. She stands stock-still, her eyes fixed on the horizon line. The phone feels like a slippery weight in her clammy palm. “Are you there?” The man — _Han_ , evidently — grunts. 

“S-solo?” Rey manages eventually. “As in, Ben Solo’s… ?”

“Father, if the birth certificate is correct,” Han quips. Rey can vaguely hear the woman ask him who he’s talking to. She sounds closer now, as though she’s puttering around nervously somewhere over his shoulder. “Kid’s got a girlfriend, I think,” Han says. 

“Um, I’m not-”

The woman sort of sputters incomprehensibly and then demands,in a rather forceful tone, that Han hand her the phone.

“This is Leia Organa,” she says crisply. 

Rey is thoroughly confused, now, being that _she’s_ the one who asked to speak to Rey. She’s only been on the phone with these people for a matter of moments and she feels thoroughly, unequivocally spun out. “Er, hello. I-”

“You're seeing my son?” Her question is prying but her tone is warm, softened with tentative hope. Idly, Rey wonders how much time has lapsed between the last time Ben spoke with them. 

“I’m his, um… friend, actually,” Rey says, shifting the phone between the crook of her shoulder. She peers inside and finds that Ben is, by some miracle, still fast asleep on the couch. She can only assume he’ll throw her off of the balcony if he finds out what she’s doing out here. “I’m Rey.” 

There’s a brief, speculative beat. “His friend,” she says. There’s something unreadable in her measured tone. Rey makes a vague noise of affirmation and then sighs, bracing herself for the inevitable. “Listen, I assume you’re calling about-”

“-The vow renewal,” Leia finishes. “I’m so glad you picked up his phone. We’ve been trying to reach Ben for _weeks._ ”

“The … vow renewal,” Rey repeats slowly. She shifts her gaze to the sliding door and blinks dazedly at her reflection. She had assumed that someone had contacted Ben’s parents about the fencing accident.

“Ben’s father and I — Well, it all happened so quickly, but we’re renewing our vows at our lake house up in Snohomish County.” Leia tuts something at Han and then turns back to the receiver. “Do you know the area? Just north of Bellevue.” 

Rey drops into one of the gray patio chairs and crosses her legs at the ankles. “Um,” she says. 

“Anyway,” Leia blusters on, blithely unaware. She spends the next few minutes telling Rey, in no shortage of detail, about the waterfront property they’ve rented(“Charming, but not in a _pretentious_ way, you know _"_ ), the catering (“Real food, none of those little cardboard finger sandwiches”), the live band (“A full band for the price of a small ensemble!”). Rey’s lips twitch into a grin as she listens, only occasionally managing to interject with an “ooh” or “ah”. She’s grown rather fond of Leia Organa during the length of their (albeit one-sided) phone call.

“So,” she says, pausing to take a breath. “You’ll go? With Ben? It’s on the twenty seventh, the weekend after next.”

Rey’s mouth falls open in a breathless little huff. “Oh, um, I don’t know. I should probably…” She trails off, peering at the shape of his dark form in the living room. “Let Ben know.” 

Rey gets the sense that Leia is rather used to others bending to her will, not as a result of any deliberate intimidation, but rather because her presence is innately commanding on its own.  When she speaks, her voice is soft with a sort of burgeoning hope that Rey suddenly cannot bear to crush. “I’d love to see you both there, Rey.”

“Let me see the phone, princess,” Han says distantly. There’s more shuffling as Leia passes her back to Han, and then retreating footsteps. “Sorry about that,” he says, his voice lowered to a murmur. “She’s a bit… ” 

“Excited,” Rey supplies fondly. “I understand.” 

There’s another pause, but it isn’t awkward, exactly, just thoughtful. “We haven’t seen Ben in, uh…” He trails off. “Well, a while. He’s doing good? The kid.” 

“Um,” Rey says pausing. She draws in a fortifying breath and then makes a vague noise of affirmation. “Yeah. He’s good.” 

Han snorts. “You’d make a lousy criminal, kid.” 

Rey brings her palm up to the back of her neck and kneads it thoughtfully. “Listen, I don’t know what happened between you, but…” Rey hesitates, shifting in her chair. “I hope you’re able to figure it out.” 

Han sighs gustily. “It’s complicated.” 

"Family tends to be,” Rey murmurs.

Before Rey hangs up, she assures Han that she’ll talk to Ben about the vow renewal, even though the promise sinks a cold weight in her stomach. Their conversation feels like some dirty secret that she’s now complicit in. She’s guilty on multiple accounts; most obviously because she went behind Ben’s back, but also because she withheld information about his accident from Han and Leia. If Ben’s earlier insistence was any indication, she assumes he wouldn’t want them knowing about it to begin with. 

She stands with Ben’s phone curled up in her fist long after the call ends, her gaze fixed unseeingly on the shadows the receding sun casts long the skyline. 

“What’re you doing out here?” 

Rey spins to find Ben standing in the threshold of the balcony. His hair is rumpled and there’s a pillow crease in his cheek and concern furrowed in his brow. “It’s cold." 

“Needed some air,” Rey replies. She tucks her hands under her armpits to conceal his phone, her chest suddenly tight. “How are you feeling?” 

“Weird,” Ben replies, rubbing his eyes. “I had a dream that this crazy girl stabbed me with a fencing sword.” 

“Did you?” Rey replies dryly.

Ben steps inside and she follows suit, hovering awkwardly in the living room. The energy in the enclosed space feels different now that he's awake. He walks over to the sink and pours himself a glass of water. “Who were you talking to?” 

Rey freezes. “Huh?” 

Ben gulps down his water and wipes at his lip with the back of his palm. A droplet of water snakes down his chin and onto his chest and her eyes track its path shamelessly. “I heard you talking to someone.”

“Oh. It was, um.” She flicks her wrist in a vague motion. “No one.”

Normal, cognizant Ben would have questioned that. Tossed her a gimlet-eyed look and made some snarky comment, like, _Sure, Rey, and I’m the Queen of England._ But groggy Ben just tilts his head and says, rather factually: “You look like you’re flying.” 

Rey grins, crossing the length of the room to meet him in the kitchen. She discretely slides his phone into her pocket and then collects his glass and places it into the dishwasher. “I’m not.”

“Oh. Am _I_ flying?”

“Afraid not.” 

Ben blinks down at his palms. “Painkillers are weird.”

“I know,” Rey says gently. She turns to face him and finds that he's shifted his gaze back up at her. He’s watching her in a soft, unhurried way. “What are you looking at?” 

“You,” Ben says factually. She shuffles her feet, restless under his inspection. It’s strange, seeing him like this. They’ve gone long enough without bickering that she anticipates it reflexively.

Rey presses her lips together and turns to the counter. “Are you hungry?” She opens one of his cabinets and rifles through his rather extensive spice rack, mostly to give her hands something to do. “I’m not much of a cook, but I could make soup, or-"

“Rey,” Ben murmurs.

She spins to find him still focused intently on her. His brows are pulled in, those full lips pressed into a flat line. “Thanks. For being here.” 

He takes a half step closer and braces his hands against the counter, caging her in on either side. It feels reminiscent of that day in the kitchen, but his expression is softer, now, almost reverent. His eyes drift to her mouth as she wets her lip with her tongue. 

Rey pulls in a shaky breath. “You've got blood on your shirt,” she blurts. 

Ben blinks down at his t-shirt, pulling it away from his body. The movement reveals a strip of his smooth, toned abdomen and the sight sucks all of the moisture out of her mouth. 

“You should probably go take a shower,” she adds, avoiding, with some effort, the mental image of his naked body. “I’ll make something to eat.” 

“Uh, yeah. Alright,” he replies dazedly, running his hand through his hair. 

When he doesn’t move, Rey coughs, her cheeks heating. “Do you, um. Need help with it, or-”

Ben’s wry grin is familiar, but it's lacks any malice. “I’m high on painkillers, not an _invalid_ , Rey. Not to say that I would _mind_ …” He quirks a brow into his hairline, smirking crookedly.

Rey whacks him on the shoulder with a dish towel. “Go shower, you tosser. You - you _smell_ ,” she bluffs, crossing her arms, her chin pitched forward challengingly.

Ben guffaws. “Do not.” 

“Do too. You smell like sweat. It’s disgusting.” Actually, it smells enticing, though she would be loathe to admit that to him. Ben tosses her another smirk before retreating down a hallway to the left of the living room. “Don’t burn down my kitchen!” He calls over his shoulder.

Rey scoffs, busying herself with scrounging around his kitchen for something suitable to eat. While she wouldn’t consider herself a practiced cook by any stretch, she’s competent enough in the kitchen. Being bounced around foster homes — and, later, living alone, once she’d aged out of the system — meant either learning how to be resourceful or going to bed hungry.

She manages to conjure up a carrot, a few potatoes, a somewhat dubious-looking onion, and a few stalks of celery, along with some broth and noodles from his pantry. His cabinets are more stocked than a bachelor’s reasonably should be, his drawers curiously devoid of takeout menus. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, being that the man is built like fucking Adonis. 

The mindless task of chopping the vegetables provides some reprieve for Rey's racing mind. She knows, realistically, that she’ll have to tell Ben about her conversation with his parents eventually. Selfishly, she finds herself enjoying the bubble they’ve built — as insubstantial as it may be. 

She’s just finishing up with dinner when Ben emerges from the hallway. He towels at the nape of his neck absently with one hand, his eyes fixed on the bubbling pot she’s been stirring. 

“Smells good,” he says. He’s changed into a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants that define the bulge of his dick just a little too much to allow her to concentrate on the task at hand. Rey coughs, nearly dropping her wooden spoon. 

“It’s almost ready.” 

He drops into one of the stools, watching her with his cheek tipped into his palm. He looks more alert than he had earlier, but he’s also moving a little more stiffly. She can tell that the painkillers has begun to wear off. “You don’t have to do this, Rey.” 

Rey pauses, the spoon still poised to her lips. “Do what?”

Ben yawns like a little kid, wide enough that she can see his molars. “Take care of me. I know you’re just doing this because you feel guilty.” 

“That’s not true. Here, tell me if this is too salty.” 

She holds the spoon out to his mouth and watches with rapt attention as his tongue darts out to lap up the broth she’d ladled out for him. It doesn’t exactly help the situation when he emits a low groan in his throat and leans back, his eyes fallen shut. “That’s so fucking good.” 

Jesus. This man could probably read a phone book and make it sound absolutely filthy. She returns the spoon to the pot with a little too much force, splattering some soup onto the stovetop. “Thanks.” 

“Where’d you learn to cook like that?” 

“I guess you could say I’m self-taught.” Rey uncaps Ben’s pill bottle and hands him a tablet. He swallows it back with a gulp of water, his dark eyes still fixed onto her. “I didn’t really have anyone else to rely on.” 

Suddenly unable to catch his gaze, she busies herself with ladling the soup into two ceramic bowls. 

“Your parents …?” 

“Drug addicts,” Rey replies, her tone flat. “Gave me up for adoption when I was a baby. I tracked them down once I turned eighteen.” She laughs mirthlessly. “Guess that turned out to be a waste of time.” 

When she turns back around to face him, his eyes are narrowed, searching. She slides one of the bowls in front of him and then drops into the stool to his left. “I knocked on the door of their trailer and they asked me if I was a hooker.”

Ben winces, stirring his soup aimlessly. For a single, awful moment, she worries that he’ll say something pitying, but he just stirs and stirs, his features soft with contemplation. “Where'd you grow up?”

Rey tucks into her soup with a little more eagerness than is probably polite. She swallows a hefty mouthful before replying. “Niima, technically. That’s outside of London.”

“What was it like?”

“Shitty little drive-by town. Bounced around a few different areas in the foster system.” Rey wipes her lip with her palm. “What about your childhood?” 

Ben stiffens a little. His posture is taut, but when he speaks, his voice is strangely subdued, almost shy. “I guess I was lucky. My parents were good to me, even if they weren’t to each other. Fought a ton when I was a kid.” Rey finds this curious, given her earlier conversation with Han, but she keeps her expression neutral as he continues. “We’ve had some disagreements.”

She tilts her head, watching his expression closely. “When was the last time you spoke to them?”

“About a year,” he mumbles, chagrined. 

Rey pulls her lip between her teeth, measuring her response. “Well,” she says, somewhat sunnily despite the morbidity of the statement, “I suppose that's better than being no one. Coming from nowhere.” Her lack of a relationship with her biological family doesn’t bother her as much as it used to, especially before she learned the truth of her parentage. She’s had the good fortune of being able to build a wonderful chosen family, anyway. 

He fixes her with a long, unreadable look, his dark eyes roving over her face with a purpose she can’t discern, but says nothing. 

They lapse into lighter topics after that. Rey finds, to her astonishment, that she has more in common with Ben Solo than she'd care to admit, though his taste in literature is just as pretentious as she could have anticipated.

“The fucking _Fountainhead_ is your favorite book?” Rey huffs. 

“Of course. _Issa_ classic.” The second round of painkillers starts to kick in somewhere between their discussion on postmodernism and Ayn Rand, and his arguments grow adorably slurred after that. 

“It’s eight hundred bloody pages-”

“Wouldn’t cut a word.” 

“-Of pseudo-intellectual drivel-”

“ _You’re_ pseudo-intellectual drivel,” he counters, quite childishly.

Rey sucks her teeth. “That doesn’t even make sense."

“Does so,” he replies, and then leans forward and tweaks her nose. Rey freezes when he trails warm fingers down her jaw before withdrawing his hand. “And,” he mumbles, "You’re cute when you’re passionate.” 

“That so?” Rey replies breathily. 

“Mmhm.” He tilts his head, his eyelids drooping. His eyes are crinkled at the edges and bright with humor. She can’t believe that she ever thought they were brown, now that she’s seen the brilliant green in them up close. “S’cute.” 

“Hm,” Rey replies, grinning. “And _you’re_ high.” 

“Not that high,” Ben mumbles. “You’re always…” He yawns. “Cute.” 

His slumps forward a bit and Rey catches his shoulder, pushing him upright. It takes some effort, being that he’s bloody _heavy._ “Alright,” she says firmly. “Off to bed.” 

After some tutting, he reluctantly drags his feet down the hall, Rey hovering uncertainly behind him. It feels awkward to go into his bedroom with him and _more_ awkward to stand in the hallway, so she sort of lingers in the doorway in a compromise between the two. 

His room is all dark, muted colors and sleek edges, the search result that would come up if you were to type _Man’s bedroom_ into Google. There’s a mounted flat screen television and, to her utter astonishment, a _fireplace_ facing a plush-looking futon and a tidy desk _._ Rey spots a modest bookshelf to the right of the bed and itches to inspect his collection once he's awake. Doing so while he sleeps just feels creepy.She might have fantasized privately about his bedroom on more than one occasion, but said fantasies also tended to include him cognizant. 

Ben flops down on his bed haphazardly and rolls over to face her, one arm slung lazily over her head. “C’mere for a minute,” he mumbles.

Rey clears her throat nervously. “I, uh, need to run back to my apartment. To pack a bag.”

Ben huffs, blowing a dark strand of hair away from his forehead. A knowing grin twitches at the edges of his wide mouth. “I promise to keep my hands to myself, Rey.” He holds three fingers up towards her. “Scout’s honor.” 

Rey rolls her eyes, venturing tentatively into the room. “Your place is like a magazine,” she comments, her tone laced with a levity she doesn’t actually feel. 

He shrugs one shoulder. “I didn’t choose most of it.” When she glances at him, one brow cocked in a question, he elaborates. “Didn’t have time. I used to work fifty, sixty hour weeks for Snoke.” Ben yawns, pulling a heavy hand over his face. “I had my assistant take care of it.”

Rey pulls a face at that and he snorts. “Wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds.”

She hovers at the precipice of his bed like a sailor approaching uncharted waters. Being in such close proximity to Ben Solo’s bed has the effect of short-circuiting her brain, as it turns out. “Yes?” She asks, her voice suddenly breathy. 

Ben blinks up at her, as though he had forgotten he’d beckoned her over in the first place. “I meant what I said before. You don’t need to feel guilty.” 

“Ben,” Rey replies firmly. “I’m here because I want to be. Not because I feel obligated.” 

“Okay,” he replies softly. He falls quiet and his eyelids drift shut. Rey waits for a moment before turning to leave, certain that he's fallen asleep, but then his warm hand closes around her wrist in a gesture that makes her pause.

“One other thing,” he adds, his voice thick with sleep. His hand is still closed over hers, the pad of his thumb tracing a repetitive path over her knuckles. 

Rey leans forward when his eyes flutter open, scrolling over her face with a sort of keen attention that feels as though he’s memorizing something in her expression. When he speaks, his voice sounds rather small and uncertain in his big bedroom. 

“You’re not nothing,” he mumbles. “Not to me.” 

And then he rolls over and is promptly asleep, leaving her to her racing thoughts and battering heartbeat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man. Rey and Ben being soft book nerds is everything I never knew I needed until I started writing it. I also cannot WAIIIT to write more Solo family fun, y’all. Their dynamic will draw from one of my favorite AU Reylo fics, Conscience and Unconsciousness by pontmercy44.
> 
> (Side note, since I’ve gotten some questions on this - Snoke is not affiliated with First Order in this AU :) They are two separate companies).
> 
> I’ve said it a few times already, but all of the support, reviews, discussion, and conjecture have warmed my heart beyond measure. Interacting with all of you has made this process so fun. Thank you for everything!
> 
> This story thus far has focused mainly on Rey’s introspection, but how would y’all like a Ben chapter next? 👀 
> 
> Until next time ❤️

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments motivate me to continue, if you feel so inclined!


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